


Recalibration

by rillrill



Series: Insurance [6]
Category: Veep
Genre: Accidental Relationship, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Anxiety Disorder, Bisexual Male Character, Family Dynamics, Long-Term Relationship(s), M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Minor Canonical Character(s), Personal Growth, Political Campaigns, Post-Endgame, Semi-Public Sex, Sexual Content, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-23
Updated: 2015-05-23
Packaged: 2018-03-31 19:53:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3990649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rillrill/pseuds/rillrill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He looks at Jonah, messy-haired and yawning in the bone-dry morning light starting to seep in through the kitchen windows, and he suddenly sees the bigger picture in vivid, brilliant color.</i>
</p><p>How Dan Egan ran for Congress, accidentally fucked his way into a long-term relationship en route to the top, and learned to love the enemy (<strike>not really</strike> <strike>maybe</strike> <strike>kind of</strike> okay actually really a lot).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recalibration

**Author's Note:**

> _ENDGAME 2: THE ENDGAMENING_ IS UPON US.
> 
> I don't know, guys. I don't know how I let this happen, either. Number one, read [Endgame](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3914281) first; the events of this will make little sense if you don't. Number two, I owe so much of this to #FuckboySquad. Blame/thank them, for they have only encouraged this into existence. (Number three, please validate me if this appealed to you in any way because part of me thinks it might be the most ridiculous thing I've ever written and that's counting the 14,000-word Hunger Games/ASOIAF AU where Sansa Stark somehow kills Oberyn Martell.)
> 
> But seriously, guys... enjoy. Because given how shamelessly self-indulgent this is, I certainly did.

_I just want my nerves_ _  
to do the work for me, I don’t want  
to have to decide. There’s blood in my hands  
for fight and blood in my legs  
for flight and nowhere  
a sign._   **  
–** “I Keep Trying to Leave But the Sex Just Gets Better and Better,” **Ali Shapiro  
  
**

* * *

 

 

 **I.**  
  
It starts when Jonah starts wearing a ring.  
  
At least, that’s the point that Dan would mark on the x-axis of time versus progression of – whatever they are. Up until that point, it’s been easy enough to pretend that it’s something else, that it’s not something that requires the exertion of time or effort. That it’s just convenient, essentially. But then Jonah goes and blows the lid off that willful delusion with a twenty-dollar ring from Amazon, and then everything is up in the air and on the table.  
  
Dan is not someone who has ever desired attachments. He’s not a sentimental person, full stop. Emotional attachment leaves you open to blind spots and mistakes, he reminds himself; cover your bases, armor your vehicles, wear a bulletproof vest on dates and never turn your back on someone you could see yourself falling for. Even sex, in his world, has been as goal-oriented and performative as anything else, something on which he trades in order to get what he really wants. Which is power. Which is control. Which is the knowledge that he’ll always be _somebody_ , and that he’ll never end up back in upstate New York, working for the school board or the mayor’s office and pretending that it was his plan all along.  
  
So of course he never expected Jonah to throw a wrench in that plan. He only has himself to blame for letting an eight-foot meme in a sweater vest sneak up on him like this. It’s incredible, he thinks, how easily seething mutual loathing can give way to intense chemistry, both physical and otherwise. They have, in essence, hate-fucked their way into emotional intimacy. So when Jonah starts wearing that fucking goddamn ring, he can’t be upset, because he’s allowed this to happen, and furthermore, he doesn’t hate it. In fact, he kind of likes it.  
  
Jesus Christ. He doesn’t know what’s happening to him.  
  
Ten years ago – or even six years ago, really – Dan would have run from this kind of commitment with anyone, let alone someone he used to be pretty sure he hated. But three years and change into this thing, he’s surprised by how little he wants to do a runner this time. What they have is weird and unexpected and it shocks him how much he’s thriving because of it. His career is in an incredible place. He’s more successful as a lobbyist than he could have ever dreamed as an advisor or speechwriter. And the same goes for Jonah – when Kent brought him on as a media consultant during the infancy of Davison-Klein, it was half out of pity and half as a favor, but it turned out to be a serendipitous surprise for all comers, because Jonah, it turns out, is almost excellent at this job. “Congratulations on finding the one thing you don’t actually suck at,” Dan remarked dryly at the time, but Jonah had just rolled his eyes and brushed it off because they both knew it was true.  
  
They make each other stronger at what they do. They push each other to work harder, be better. And Dan doesn’t know when he became so content with whatever this is, but it doesn’t sicken him like it would have five years ago, not at all. He comes home to Jonah hanging up the dry cleaning in their bedroom, cold still clinging to his clothes and hair still mussed from the winter wind outside, and as he watches Jonah separate their shirts and distribute them to the appropriate ends of the closet, the light catches the ring on his left hand and all of a sudden Dan is overcome by how _real_ this feels.  
  
“Hey,” he says, pulling off his suit jacket and gesturing for a hanger. Jonah hands him one, already shrugging off his own sport coat. “Are you as fucking exhausted as I am?”  
  
“Possibly more so,” Jonah says. “I snuck out early to do a couple errands and I figured I’d try to get some work done when I got home, but I’d actually rather put a gun in my mouth, so –”  
  
“Understood,” says Dan. He reaches for a t-shirt from the dresser. It’s old and worn-in and sports a logo for Selina Meyer’s Vice-Presidential Get Moving! Campaign, and Jonah smirks as he takes it in but says nothing. “What are you thinking for dinner?”  
  
Jonah rolls his eyes. “Literally anything with meat in it.”  
  
“Kent’s still on that macro-vegan thing, huh?”  
  
“He just keeps ordering lunch for the office and there’s no way to say no. Hand to God, if I have to eat one more quinoa salad on company time –”  
  
“I was just gonna order from that Peruvian place,” Dan says as he idly watches Jonah change, his broad shoulders sloping forward as he leans over to grab a white t-shirt from the drawer. “The one with the really good chicken. Is that enough meat for you?”  
  
Jonah snorts. “I’ve got more than enough meat for you –”  
  
“Fuck you.”  
  
“You dug your own grave there,” Jonah shrugs, a non-apology. “You knew what I was when you chose this.”  
  
Dan rolls his eyes, reaching for his phone instinctively. “And I live with that regret every day, asshole,” he says, only vaguely truthfully.  
  
So they eat dinner, CNN on in the background and laptops open on the kitchen table, and it’s a comfortable, lived-in silence as Dan taps out work emails on his side of the table and Jonah does the same opposite him. But there’s something slightly discomfiting playing on the edges of his mind. He can’t turn off the part of him that keeps wondering about the deeper implications, what this means for the months and years to come. His future is teetering on the edge of merging with Jonah’s to become their future, “our future,” and in all the charts and graphs he’s prepared to map out and be prepared for any possible eventuality, he’s never bothered to prepare for this one.  
  
And the thing is, he still has time to change his mind. But the thing that’s fucking him up, as he collapses into bed, mouth minty with toothpaste and feeling exhausted but accomplished (it _was_ a productive workday), is that he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to. He’s content, for the near future, to do exactly this: to come home to something that is almost, but not exactly, a _relationship_.  
  
An arrangement. That’s what he calls it. Almost a relationship, but not quite. Mutual in terms that are left unspoken.  
  
He’s almost happy, and that’s why he’s pretty sure it can’t stay like this.

 

* * *

  
  
**II.**  
  
The first part was a lie. It really starts with drinks.  
  
The bar at the Four Seasons is always crowded, which is a good thing. The more faces in the crowd, the less likely he’ll be noticed having an under-the-radar meeting with a party strategist on PKM’s money. In fairness, Dan has plausible deniability on all accounts; he’s known Alex Thorne since his first job in Albany and at most, this looks to the naked eye like a meeting between two old friends.  
  
The first thing Alex says after ordering a whiskey-ginger is, “Do you see yourself running for office?”  
  
“Shit,” Dan says. It’s _all_ he can say for a moment. He takes a sip of his bourbon, sets down the glass, and scratches at his furrowed brow with one thumbnail, taking his time to put the words together. “Does anyone else see me running for office?”  
  
“I don’t know if you’ll have heard about this yet,” Alex says, “but Tom Pollard isn’t going to be seeking reelection. A lot of names are being thrown around as to who might run for his seat. Yours has… come up.”  
  
“Has it?”  
  
“Mm.” He sips his drink, nods. “Hometown boy turned White House strategist turned successful lobbyist. Turned state rep. Not a bad arc.”  
  
“That would entail moving back to New York,” says Dan.  
  
“It would. Albeit not necessarily permanently or right away. And, you know, you’d end up spending a lot of time here, anyway.”  
  
Dan frowns. Alex isn’t wrong. That’s the thing. He’d be a fucking liar if he tried to deny that he’d thought (significantly, in depth and breadth) about running for office; it’s always been one of the logical end goals marked up on his spreadsheets and documents. He’s imagined this moment countless times, but always under different circumstances. Being approached by an old friend to run for a seat in the New York 25th – it always seemed too easy, too idealistic to actually happen. He always assumed there would be more scheming involved.  
  
“Right,” Dan says, more to fill the space than anything else. He stares at the ice in his glass, traces patterns in the condensation on the outside, interlocking crosses to form a sort of chessboard. “I’ve got to be honest. This is the first I’m hearing about any of this. But my first impression is that I like what I’m hearing.”  
  
“And?”  
  
“Jesus, what, did you want an answer right away?”  
  
“Doesn’t have to be a straight yes or no,” he shrugs. “Just, you know, blink once if you think there’s a fuck of a chance it may be a possibility.”  
  
“Anything’s possible,” Dan says with a wink.  
  
“Good. Good to know.”  
  
  
  
  
He’s got files on files saved on his laptop and in countless Dropbox folders. When he gets home, he opens a solid ten of them up, cross-referencing and copy-pasting into a new spreadsheet. Files like “10 Year Plan_Extension_2006” and “2.Me_Phase_3” litter his desktop when he finally sits back to take a break, an hour and a half later. It doesn’t strike him exactly how prepared he’s always been for this moment until he’s got all the evidence digitally spread out in front of him.  
  
If anything, he’s overprepared in every area but one. The page marked “PERSONAL LIFE” is glaringly empty, a series of question marks at best. For whatever stupid reason, he always imagined that this column would fill itself out in time, that one of his strategic relationships would eventually evolve into a strategic engagement and then a strategic marriage just in time to make him look like a devoted, electable family man for his potential constituents. And all of a sudden, the one thing he wants more than anything, the thing he’s wanted since college, is right in front of him – more than possible, it’s probable and almost downright likely – and he’s so deeply, stupidly unprepared in this one crucial area.  
  
“Holy shit. Have you slept at all?”  
  
He looks up from his laptop to see Jonah in the living room doorway, rubbing sleep out of his eyes with one hand. Back to the clock on his laptop. 5:36 a.m. _Shit_.  
  
“Fuck,” he mutters in response. “No.”  
  
“I didn’t hear you come in last night,” Jonah says as he leans against the wall, still obviously half-asleep. “Are you okay?”  
  
“Yeah, I just – I got home late. _Fuck_ , I didn’t sleep.” He hasn’t pulled an all-nighter like this since his White House days. “I had an interesting meeting last night.” He stands up from the couch and stretches, following Jonah to the kitchen and hitting the button on the coffeemaker before he can get there.  
  
“Yeah?” Jonah asks with another yawn. “Who with?”  
  
“Alex Thorne. He, ah – he wants to know if I’d be interested in running for a seat in the House. Apparently my name’s been thrown around and it’s my home district back in New York and – yeah. He thinks I’ve got a shot at winning.”  
  
Jonah stops short at the kitchen counter, coffee cup in one hand, seemingly thunderstruck. Dan counts the seconds before he finally says, “Are you fucking around here?”  
  
“I don’t think so.”  
  
“I, uh – I just – _what did you tell him_?”  
  
Dan swallows, his throat suddenly feeling very dry. “I said it was a possibility. I didn’t want to commit to anything until I, y’know –”  
  
“Weighed the other possibilities.”  
  
“Essentially.”  
  
“And that’s what you’ve been doing all night?” asks Jonah quietly, uncertainly, hitting the button on the coffeemaker and turning to look at him, folding his arms over his chest. “Weighing the possibilities?” His hair is a fucking mess and there are bags under his eyes and he’s squinting at Dan while the Keurig spits dark roast into a chipped Hughes for America mug. He looks bewildered and tentative and hopeful all at once and maybe it’s the sleepless delirium or the way he’s looking at Dan like a kid who just found out he’s skipping school for Disney World, but suddenly something clicks inside Dan, the missing piece in the puzzle he’s been up all night trying to solve, and the answer becomes obviously, stupidly clear. And it won’t be easy, and it won’t be fun, and he won’t even necessarily win, but he’s pretty sure that he can stage-manage this – and he still cringes before using the word a little bit – this _relationship_ into the ultimate political strategy.  
  
He looks at Jonah, messy-haired and yawning in the bone-dry morning light starting to seep in through the kitchen windows, and he suddenly sees the bigger picture in vivid, brilliant color.  
  
“Yeah,” Dan says quietly. “I think I’m gonna do it. Look, are you free for dinner tonight? We have some shit to talk about.”

* * *

  
  
**III.**  
  
Because here’s the thing.  
  
Dan did the mysterious ladies’ man thing in D.C. for a solid decade, and it _worked_. He fucked his way from Albany to the Hill, strategically aligned himself with the powerful and didn’t earn too much of a bad reputation along the way. He did exactly what the situation called for every time. A rising star once told him “You have to go down to go up,” and that’s exactly what he did. (He never got the job he wanted with Chung, though, and it still burns him to think about every time.)  
  
A single man in D.C., a self-made genius policy playboy (to paraphrase Iron Man, which Jonah makes him watch all of, because apparently being a grown man with a deep interest in comic book movies isn’t embarrassing at all in Jonah’s mind), looks okay in his thirties, but going into his forties, it seems a little sad. This isn’t New York or L.A., people are actually expected to settle down here. Have families and shit. And while _that_ part’s never happening, thank God, he thinks he can work with “settling down.” Or, at least, the illusion of settling down.  
  
He’s not in love. He’s not sure that he’s even capable of it. But who in this town actually is? They’re called _political marriages_ for a reason – it’s like Game of Thrones with more drab grey power suits, far more about alliances and appearances than any actual semblance of feeling. “Marriage has always been a performance,” Amy tells him clinically when he comments on how suspiciously _happy_ she and Ed look on each other’s arms. (He suspects that they’ve actually practiced touching each other with affection.) “You just do what your parents did and pretend to be happy in public and then go home and sleep in separate bedrooms and say it’s because you have terrible insomnia.”  
  
And here’s the other thing. Much as it still somewhat chafes the part of him that desires perfect control of his image, he and Jonah haven’t exactly been discreet, these past few months especially. Especially since the stunt with the ring. Especially since they’ve both essentially accepted that this is what they are – maybe not _in love_ , but certainly a unit, and in the swamp of commitment.  
  
And it’s just – he’s not a romantic, never has been, but this is important to him. It’s crucial that things with Jonah stay just as they are, because he can’t afford to start over with someone else, not at this point. Learning someone new is a fucking chore, and besides, he’s always been more about the sprint, not the marathon. If he really digs deep and forces himself to self-analyze, he has to admit that he’s not even sure how he’d go about navigating a traditional relationship at this point. Not that he couldn’t do it, because fuck that, he’s the ice man and he can do anything. But he senses that he’s in a rare, privileged position here, wherein he’s stumbled into something with someone who _knows_ him. Who’s seen him at his worst and doesn’t care. Who’s seen him at his worst and thinks it’s a turn on. He doesn’t have to hide the worst parts of himself from Jonah, because Jonah is just as fucked-up as he is, and it just _works_. He doesn’t want to lose this whatever-it-is. Not while they can still give each other what they need.  
  
So no, cutting and running isn’t the answer, especially not now. The election is in eleven months. He sees exactly two options: he can either keep his personal life well under wraps, keep it under the table and run on the issues alone, or he can put it out there and control the narrative himself and find some way to spin this whatever-it-is into something he can work in his favor. It’s just – it’s a whole thing, he thinks, as he leaves work in rush-hour traffic, shutting off the radio to work over the thoughts he can’t shut off. He wouldn’t have ever considered himself closeted. Per se. He wouldn’t consider himself _anything_. He likes men and women and he doesn’t think about labels or terminology because it doesn’t matter. But it’s never made sense logistically to carve out a public identity for himself as anything other than a ladies’ man who is, above all, married to the job.  
  
But liberal America loves friendly white gays. Even conservative America is down with Ellen. And the whole gay-power-couple thing is still an underworked strategy in D.C., even though it’s no longer career seppuku and – he realizes – would actually help differentiate him from all the other interchangeable fortyish Dans in this city.  
  
So really, it’s just a question of which lie they’re going to run with. Because the truth of what they are, what they have, doesn’t fit neatly into any box or narrative, but Dan’s not about to let that get in the way of him getting what he deserves.  
  
He meets Jonah in the restaurant bar, slides up to him and lays a hand on his wrist, squeezing just a bit, and when Jonah looks up from his phone with an odd little smile, it catches him just the slightest bit off-guard, and it occurs to him suddenly that they might get away with this. Because even though he knows the truth about what they are, they both have no illusions about their dynamic – from the outside in, he can tell that it looks normal. It looks _conventional_. And that’s exactly what he’s going to need to win.

* * *

  
  
**IV.**  
  
Drawing up the strategy is easy. It’s implementing it that takes time.  
  
After couple weeks’ worth of intense research, exploratory committee meetings, and strategizing, Dan concludes that the niche of the out, queer, charismatic politician is one that is not yet being adequately filled. And after another week of working it over in his own mind tirelessly, he pens an op-ed for the Washington Post in support of a new LGBT issues forum, in which he casually drops in the fact that he’s been in a “serious, committed relationship with a man for three years . . . the truth is, I’m a member of the LGBTQ community, and my brothers and sisters deserve better.” It’s calculated, completely pandering, reads as if it were ghostwritten by Ryan Murphy on a deadline, but it does the trick. His Google alert on his own name spikes off the chart.  
  
It seems too easy. It’s not as if there isn’t pushback; the internet explodes with rumors about who he may or may not currently be dating, and who he may or may not have fucked in the past. He stays quiet, bribes anyone he’s strategically aligned himself with in the past to stay quiet as well, and waits for the press to piece together the details of his personal life on their own time. It doesn’t take long. Most of his social media accounts may be locked for privacy, but Jonah’s certainly aren’t, and it only takes a few eagle-eyed snoops hours to pull the most casually incriminating photos from Jonah’s Instagram (at least, the ones Dan didn’t have him take down prior to the initial press push): “i guess dan is TOO COOL TO LOOK AT THE CAMERA #longnight,”  “hurry up with my damn croissant @DanEgan!!!!” and, perhaps most telling, an unfiltered shot of the two of them from the Fourth of July previous, in uncharacteristically blatant PDA mode – Dan’s hand on Jonah’s knee, Jonah’s arm around his shoulder, practically eye-fucking each other raw under an American flag – that had been captioned, simply, “#merica.”  
  
The internet commenters comb through tweets, they scan Jonah’s timeline for references to dates and geotags at bars and restaurants. Dan’s as impressed as he is perturbed at how quickly the public timeline of the relationship is laid out for the rest of the world at large – even moments from before they were together, work-related outings during the EEOB years, seem meaningful here, devoid of context.  
  
The choice to “allow” this version of the relationship to surface on its own was Jonah’s idea, oddly enough. “Nobody’s going to buy it if you put out a fucking press release with a whole pride parade attached,” he’d said, “but if you just casually allude to it, they’ll be interested and they’ll start digging, looking at who you follow on Twitter, who you’ve been photographed with recently. And, like, I take really good photos of you, you know I have a great eye for that shit –”  
  
“Debatable.”  
  
“ – so once they look at my feeds, they’ll be like, ‘Oh, that’s gotta be it.’ And then it seems less like a press blitz and more like a regular rumor and you look like a little less of a manipulative dickshit.”  
  
“Fuck you,” Dan said, “but I’ll take it.”  
  
The thing is, Jonah had been right. The press is falling for the reveal timeline hook, line and sinker. Dan’s Twitter is blowing up with @-replies from the nosy, so he takes it a step further and snaps a photo with Jonah at a fundraiser for an NGO they’re both obligated to attend. “So much speculation about my personal life, but @Ryantology and I only want to speculate about the future of #UnitedWater,” he tweets, and with that it’s confirmed, and he sits back and scrolls through the responses. It’s strange, he thinks, to have so many people already invested in this story they’re telling, but not out of the ordinary; he’d made the news enough times when he worked in the West Wing to propel him to a certain kind of wonk notoriety that extended even a few miles outside of the District.  
  
“Why the fuck’d you have to go with that one?” Jonah mutters as he taps at his phone, retweeting the photo even as he gripes about it. “My hair’s all sweaty-looking and shit.”  
  
“You always look sweaty,” Dan shoots back. “It’s your own fault for wearing three layers when it’s fucking ninety degrees in here.”  
  
“How was I supposed to know the heat was going to be blasting?” Jonah says, sounding more irritated. “It’s cold as balls outside. Either way I’m fucked.”  
  
Dan lays a hand on his thigh beneath the tablecloth and squeezes it lightly, then a little tighter, smirking as he moves his hand slowly but steadily upward. “You should’ve known better,” he says in a low voice, barely audible over the party babble in the room, but he’s got his eyes fixed on Jonah’s and notices every microexpression and twitch. He’s feeling bold, like he wants to do something stupid, something _public_. “Do you agree? You should have known better?”  
  
“I, uh – ugh. Fuck you,” Jonah mumbles, in that voice that Dan knows he only uses when he’s trying to desperately will away an erection at an inconvenient time. “I’m dressed – appropriately.”  
  
“Oh, no,” Dan says, starting to enjoy the game as much as he always does. “Dressed ‘appropriately’ would mean, I don’t know –” He raises an eyebrow as he chooses his words carefully. “ – well, that sweater vest would look much better with my come all over it, for one thing.”  
  
Jonah bites his lip and narrows his eyes as Dan squeezes his thigh again. He knows how stupid this is, they’re in the middle of a crowded room, surrounded by peers and colleagues and have essentially just confirmed their relationship status on Twitter, and _he’s running for office_ for Christ’s sake, no, this is incredibly stupid, but –  
  
Five minutes and a considerable bribe later they’re alone in the coat check room, the door shut tight behind them as Dan clanks open a folding chair leaning against the wall and sits down heavily upon it, so as to not scuff the knees of his neatly pressed suit. Jonah’s already got his belt undone but pauses before he unzips his fly, stroking Dan’s face and jawline with one hand as Dan smirks up at him knowingly. “You know, you’re still looking pretty sweaty there, Jonah,” he says, lusty and low in his throat. “As soon as we walk back out there, everyone’s going to know exactly what we were doing in here.”  
  
“I hate you,” Jonah groans.  
  
Dan sucks him off with a practiced, performative mix of enthusiasm and vague condescension. He wants to tease him a little, wants to make it good, draw out every tremble and guttural moan he can. He’s so damn good at this, always has been, but he can’t help distancing himself from the scene at hand, overanalyzing every move he makes – too slow, too fast, no, just right. He can feel the muscles in Jonah’s legs shake every so often and takes it in, internalizes it. He can still hear the music and the babble of the party outside the door and _Jesus fucking Christ this is so goddamn stupid_ but he relishes it anyway.  
  
“That’s so fucking good,” Jonah says, syllables woozy and liquid between gritted teeth. He pushes a hand through Dan’s hair, probably fucking it up, probably coming away sticky with product. _So fucking good_. Yeah. Of course it is.  
  
His jaw aches and his own erection is straining against his pants, but he looks upward to make eye contact with Jonah anyway, feels his whole body shudder and forces himself to focus on nothing but the heat and weight and the little noises he’s drawing out of him. He finishes, and Dan swallows without hesitation, wiping the corners of his mouth with index finger and thumb as he does, pulling Jonah down for a rough kiss right after. He hears Jonah mumble a breathy _Thank you_ against his lips as he brushes his fingertips over Dan’s jaw and it’s so disgusting, honestly. He loves it when Jonah goes out of his way to antagonize him beforehand, gives him something solid to push against, but in the immediate aftermath, when he’s yielding and pliable and almost sweet – that’s when Dan has to watch himself, because that’s when the itchy, anxious urge to say something he might regret comes rushing up. But he swallows it down like bile, doesn’t show his hand. He’s gotten so good at this.  
  
  
  
  
They’re quieter than usual on the way home. Dan’s mentally tallying the hands shook, the pleasantries exchanged, the potential donors schmoozed. Jonah’s driving, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel in the way that he must _know_ by now drives Dan insane.  
  
“I swear, I’ll rip your goddamn fingernails out,” Dan mutters, shooting Jonah a glare from the corner of his eye. He just snorts, tapping a little harder a few more times before stopping. Dan glances back down at his phone, then adds, “You think tonight went well?”  
  
Jonah shrugs. “Fuck yeah.”  
  
“Did Colleen Robinson seem kind of – I don’t know, weird?”  
  
“Robinson? That fucking bear trap? She’s always weird.” Jonah hangs a hard right turn onto their street. It’s sleeting outside and Dan doesn’t want to leave the car, doesn’t want to make the run to the front door, and as Jonah pulls into the drive and parks, neither of them bother to get out or even undo their seatbelts. There’s no sound but the steady _taptaptaptaptaptaptap_ of the sleet against the windshield and roof of the car, and Dan stares at the wet, runny blotches on the windshield making the light from the street go impressionistic and doesn’t say anything else.  
  
  
  
  
  
 “Here’s the thing,” Amy says. “I still can’t believe you’re doing this before me.”  
  
They’ve just thrown back shots of whiskey at their favorite after-work spot on the day that Dan has officially started his leave of absence to focus on running. Amy’s mascara is smudged beneath her eyes from the fifteen-hour day they’ve just pulled and she’s got the sleeves of her grey suit jacket pushed up to her elbows, which constitutes cutting loose on a Friday night as far as Amy Brookheimer is concerned. Dan smirks as she slides the shot glass away from her with two delicate fingers and flags down the bartender to order her usual gin and tonic.  
  
“Seriously,” she adds moments later, using the two tiny red straws in her glass to push the wedge of lime all the way to the bottom. “No offense, but EEOB Amy is so pissed that you’re going to beat me into elected office.”  
  
“Yeah? How does K Street Amy feel about it?” Dan knocks on the wood of the bar as he says it, almost subconsciously. He’s not exactly superstitious, but it’s an ingrained move, something his mom always made him do, and he’s also not into testing fate right now.  
  
She shrugs, makes a little face – not so much a readable expression as a bit of visual punctuation. “I mean, I’m not exactly envious. Have fun spending half your life begging rich people you don’t know for money so that you can get reelected every two years –”  
  
“Yeah, you know, I’m not so fucking pumped about that part either, Ames.”  
  
“Why bother running, then? You’re doing it backward,” she says. “Everyone in the House wants _our_ jobs.”  
  
He fixes her with a sincere, practiced look, steepling his fingers on the bar in front of him. “Would you believe me if I told you it’s about wanting to make a difference and maybe help turn this country around?”  
  
“Fuck no,” Amy snorts, and Dan dissolves into laughter with her.  
  
“Yeah, no,” he says as he regains his composure. “It’s more that – fuck, I don’t know. I’m bored. I have other shit I want to accomplish. I don’t like feeling like I’m playing a game on easy mode.” Which is true. It’s as truthful as he can be. The whole truth is that he gets itchy and restless when he stays too long in one place. The cushy lobbying job felt like a dream come true until it turned into a nightmare, his anxiety flaring up at inopportune moments, panic attacks coming more and more frequently and from lower and lower-stakes failures. It seems as though the higher he bounces in the private sector, the harder it is to feel content at any moment.  
  
The past few weeks, though, have been almost a fever dream. His name is on the ballot in his district and he’s got a campaign office set up in Rochester. He’s spending more and more time in New York to canvass and introduce himself to voters, and has put together a campaign staff consisting of some ex-Meyer campaign people, one of Chung’s top guys, an ex-Maddox aide who Jonah vouched for, a few people he knew back in Albany, and a couple bright kids finishing up poli-sci degrees at Cornell, because bringing in the alma mater for brownie points always looks good. He feels motivated and energized and considerably, actually happy in a way that he hasn’t felt in a long time.  
  
He loves the game. That’s the thing. The fear of losing is what drives him; the competition makes him better. He bounced as high as he could behind the scenes – he made it to the White House, he was the guy behind the guys. Now, if he’s honest with himself, he wants to play harder. He wants to move up a league.  
  
He sighs, sipping his bourbon, glancing around the room. Amy’s scrolling through her phone reflexively, and she lets out a long exhale that matches his almost exactly. “Sorry,” she adds as he glances at her curiously. “Husband shit.”  
  
Dan rolls his eyes. “How is the Incredible Sulk?”  
  
“Ed is fine,” she says placidly, not even pretending to acknowledge the insult. “He’s in Boston. I think he’s in Boston.”  
  
“Jesus, you two aren’t even trying, are you?”  
  
“ _He_ tries,” says Amy, laying down her phone and rolling her eyes up to the ceiling. “I thought we agreed not to talk about this stuff.”  
  
“It’s _interesting_. Jesus, Ame, I’m just trying to lighten the mood.”  
  
“I’m just saying, you’re throwing a lot of stones from a pretty fragile fucking glass house right now –”  
  
“Last time I checked, I’m not the one who threw the big white wedding for the benefit of the Post’s Styles section,” Dan says, irritated. “ _I’m_ not in a marriage where I treat the other person like an unpaid intern who basically just exists to hover awkwardly behind me in photos –”  
  
Amy rolls her eyes again, even harder this time, and Dan has to bite back a comment about that, too. “Nope, unlike me, you’ve got your shit _entirely_ together,” she says. “You’re right. You’re the aspirational one – oh, wait, just kidding, you’re with Hepatitis J.”  
  
“Watch it,” Dan mutters. “We agreed not to talk about this stuff, right?”  
  
She shakes her head. “You’re such a fucking hypocrite, Dan.”  
  
“Yeah, okay, so we’re both settling,” he snaps, the words tumbling out before he can edit himself. “So what? Who gives a shit? If all of this is a performance, who cares? Doesn’t it make sense to at least settle for someone you have feelings for? I mean, Jesus, Amy, you can say whatever you want about this, I don’t fucking care, but –” He stops short as she raises both eyebrows in a look of genuine surprise. “What? What’s that look?”  
  
“You just said you have feelings for him.” She takes a beat, then snorts with laughter again. “For Jonah.”  
  
“I didn’t – no, I didn’t.”  
  
“Oh, yeah, you did,” Amy says, sounding more and more smug by the nanosecond. “‘Doesn’t it at least make sense to settle for someone you have feelings for?’ That’s definitely what it sounded like –”  
  
“Fuck off,” Dan snaps again. “I misspoke. It’s not like that.”  
  
“I think it might be,” she sneers, tipping back what’s left of her G &T. Dan can feel his face burning as she signals the bartender to close out her tab. She looks like the cat that ate the motherfucking canary, brushing her hair back out of her face as she leans over to sign the receipt, and it’s fucking infuriating.  
  
They don’t talk about this for a reason, because there’s a mutual sense of disapproval that they can’t get over, and it’s not that they’d be any better off together, because Dan knows he needs things that she couldn’t give him – Amy doesn’t operate on the same wavelength as most people; her intimacy issues make him look downright well-adjusted. They were a messy trainwreck the first time around and they’d be even worse by now if they’d given it a real second chance. But Dan _cares_ about her, hates seeing her look so trapped, because as smart as Amy is, she doesn’t have a shred of a poker face when it comes to how much she obviously dislikes marriage and intimacy and any kind of tenderness. The thing is, though, he knows he’s a better liar than she is. He immediately snaps to complain about Jonah when his name comes up at all, rolls his eyes and throws out the same old nicknames and insults. And he usually pulls it off, makes it seem like a setup of convenience, like he’s as unhappy as she is, and they commiserate and then move on. Because it’s easy and it’s comfortable and he doesn’t have to tell the truth.  
  
(And she can act like she’s so much better than he is, but Dan knows the truth, that when Jonah brings up their brief string of dates, back before she gave up even pretending to like sex, he’s not lying. She can act like she’s better than him but Jonah knows about the three freckles that make a triangle on her right hipbone and he says she didn’t let him turn off CNN when he went down on her, which lines up perfectly with his own experiences. And he doesn’t drag that incident up because he likes to keep it in his back pocket, never knows when it’ll come in handy as a trump card, but if there are two people at a table who have both checked their email while getting head from Jonah Ryan, then neither of them has much of a high horse to sit on, in his estimation. But Dan doesn’t talk about that.)  
  
“Look,” Dan says as they leave the bar. Unseasonably frigid spring wind whips across their faces and Amy shivers into her coat, wrapping her scarf one more time around her neck. “I actually had something to ask you. I’m gonna lose my campaign manager after the primary –”  
  
“Aha.”  
  
“And I was wondering if you had any names you could throw out for replacements?”  
  
Amy cocks a brow, shoves her hands into her coat pockets. “So that’s not a thinly-veiled request for me to run your campaign?”  
  
_It’s not,_ Dan thinks _, but now that you mention it_ —“Would you have any interest in that?”  
  
She shrugs. “I have a few names I can give you. You know Leigh Patterson?”  
  
“Never heard the name.”  
  
“She’s one of Kent’s top strategists. Used to work for Selina... You fired her once –”  
  
“Ame, I truly have no idea who you’re talking about.”  
  
Amy rolls her eyes again, like she’s going for a fucking world record tonight. “Ask Jonah. They’d know each other. She’s no me, but she’s smart and professional and apparently she got Donna Lyman elected up in Wisconsin on eight hundred grand and a bucket of wishful thinking, so…” She trails off. “I’d do it, but, you know. I’m taking on enough of your clients as it is.”  
  
“Don’t worry about it,” Dan says with a hand wave. “I’ll talk to Ellie.”  
  
“It’s Leigh.”  
  
“Yeah. I’ll talk to her. Thanks. You want a ride home?”  
  
“I’m fine.” Amy shakes her head as she heads for her car. “You’re not gonna drive me all the way back to Chevy Chase. Go home.”  
  
When he gets home, Jonah’s on the couch, laptop open, some movie Dan doesn’t recognize playing on the TV. He glances up from the screen with a stupid little half-smile and Dan suddenly feels something hit him, some kind of ice-cold punch to the diaphragm, and suddenly he’s striding toward the couch, overcome with the desire to _get rid_ of the feelings he _doesn’t even have_ in the first place.  
  
And then they’re kissing, hard, messy and rough and competitive, and Jonah mutters “Whoa” as Dan clambers on top of him, clutching onto either side of his face, and it’s all physical. He repeats it inside his head, _it’s all physical, it’s all physical, it’s not real, it’s all physical_ , and he can hear CGI explosions coming from the TV behind him but all he can think about are the bombs and shells he’s dodged so far and the way his heart must reek of gunpowder for all the bullets he’s fired in self-defense.  
  
“God damnit,” Dan hisses, resting his forehead against Jonah’s. He doesn’t want to think right now. He wants to turn off his itchy, restless fucking brain for twenty goddamn minutes and instead all he can focus on is the war chant pounding in his head right now, the one that goes _Amy was right, Amy was right, Amy was right._ Jonah raises his hands to Dan’s collar, starts to un-knot his tie, and Dan pulls his head back, catches a glimpse of _the fucking ring_ gleaming on his finger, and suddenly he can’t breathe and he can’t compartmentalize and everything is very, very wrong. The familiar kind of wrong. The wrong he knows much too well by now.  
  
He takes a quarter of a Klonopin and falls asleep with Jonah tracing patterns on his back with one lazy finger and as he’s drifting off, he’s not sure why, but he mutters “Thank you.”  
  
They won’t talk about it.

 

* * *

  
  
**V.**  
  
It’s late spring, almost summer, and they’re in Rochester and Dan’s allergies are out of control. The winters upstate last forever and cause everything to bloom at once as soon as the weather permits, and it’s rendering his contacts nearly unwearable and his mood a disaster.  
  
He’s in Rochester to campaign, first and foremost, and it’s going pretty well. The Egan name helps, because the Egans are a pillar of the community; his dad’s a beloved personal injury lawyer and Dave’s on the school board and not everyone knows their name, it’s not _that_ small of a city, but enough people know that the Egans are Good People that it makes putting together the meet-and-greets a lot easier for his campaign staff.  
  
But it’s also late spring and they’re both in Rochester because the reality of the situation just keeps becoming more and more apparent, and if he wins, they’re going to be stuck here for God knows how long. Dan can already tell that Jonah isn’t totally sold on the idea. “I’ll probably just stay in D.C.,” he says uncertainly. “I’m not moving to fucking upstate New York, Dan. I’m not gonna do it. No fucking way.”  
  
“We’ll compromise,” Dan says smoothly. “What about the city?”  
  
“It’s seven hours away. I might as well just stay in Washington.” Jonah shifts in place. He’s got his camera bag thrown over his shoulder, because that’s the part-time role he’s taken on, snapping photographs on the campaign trail as Dan shakes hands and schmoozes. And it helps to have him there, because Dan’s not necessarily running on the Friendly White Gay platform alone, but there are enough voters who’ve heard and care, and if he’s committing to this public version of whatever they are, it makes sense to have Jonah around. Like a trophy wife with a viable skill and a worse haircut. ( _Much_ worse in the spring humidity.)  
  
It’s about differentiating him from the other Democrats in the primary, because Rochester leans blue and if the nomination is his, so is the seat for however long he wants it, praise be to gerrymandering. But it’s a three-person race for the nomination and there’s a month until the primary and that means the rest of their spring, at least, is devoted to playing doting boyfriends and helping Dan make up for the fact that he doesn’t live in the district he’s angling to represent. The spin is that this is a positive thing. The spin is that Dan Egan is a Washington insider and this is a good quality, because unlike the rest of these hicks from Monroe County, Dan Egan has spent his entire career playing Beltway baseball and knows how to get shit accomplished. He’s a good boy from a good local family— _you know the Egans, James and Sandy and Dave-and-Sarah and Dan, Dan-who-works-in-D.C., yes, he’s doing so well for himself_ —but he’s also a seasoned professional and that’s what sets him apart. _Who do you want to represent you, some rube or a D.C. insider who has your interests at heart? That’s hardly a question. And have you, good liberals, heard that this one has a boyfriend? How much of a soulless Washington insider could he really be?_  
  
The strategy is good and he’s only come up with half of it himself. And now they’re in Rochester over Memorial Day weekend and the Egan campaign is throwing a Sunday barbecue on the lake and the whole family has invited seemingly everyone they’ve ever met. There are baskets of Egan for Congress buttons and a pile of yard signs stacked up behind the picnic tables and endless piles of campaign literature on hand. And Jonah aims his camera, adjusting the lens, snapping a few test shots as Dan finishes up on a call with Leigh back at the campaign office. “You need to raise at least $8000 today,” she reminds him, and he ends the call with an eye-rolling “And good morning to you too,” feeling more and more like he’s becoming a telemarketer for his own goddamn cause.  
  
“Danny!” And there’s Dave, in lobster-print shorts and a crisp white polo, looking – as ever – like a younger, cleaner-cut, better-slept version of Dan himself. Dan prefers to think of himself and his brother as occupying opposite ends of a spectrum, but if pressed, he’d admit to himself that they’re both more like slightly distorted variations on their father - Dave's the family-photos version, all affable motivation and community pride, the person their father was when he was trying to be the best version of himself, but, Dan thinks, he inherited the worst parts of their father himself, his short fuse and emotional disconnect and tendency to disappear into his work. More often than not, Dan feels like a misfire, a first draft upon which Dave only ever managed to improve.  
  
Dave strides up to them with both his kids trailing behind in their red-white-and-blue best, and Dan has to hand it to him, because he’s really going all-out to make this family look as photogenic and all-American as possible. “Beautiful day, huh?” Dave says, flipping his sunglasses off and popping them in his shirt collar, and Jonah surreptitiously snaps a few more shots as Dan angles himself toward the camera.  
  
“Absolutely,” Dan smiles. “Gonna be a long one, though.” He lowers his voice and adds, “I’ve got two dinner parties to hit tonight. I’m going to put a fucking bullet between my teeth if I see one more plate of cheese and crackers—”  
  
Dave laughs too loudly, clapping him on the shoulder. “Hilarious. Jonah, put that camera down, get over here. How’ve you been, buddy?”  
  
Jonah shrugs as he joins them in the shade. “Same shit, different day,” he says. “Nice to get out of D.C. for the long weekend, though. We haven’t been able to swing that since – what was it? Last Christmas?”  
  
“Not this most recent one, but the one before that, yeah,” Dan nods. “Not like this is much of a fucking vacation, but –”  
  
Dave shakes his head. “I don’t know how you do it. Honestly. School board elections are hard enough,” he says. “I wouldn’t have the strength to put myself through a campaign like this.”  
  
_No_ , Dan thinks, _you wouldn’t_. That’s the difference between Dave and himself. Dave has always chosen the easy way out. Dave has always been content to be a big fish in a small pond instead of trying to swim with the sharks. And Dan, well, he ran straight into the riptide, swam until he couldn’t see land, swam until he became a shark himself. Things always seemed to come easier for Dave – the prom dates, team captainships, SAT scores, all of it – but maybe it’s because he never had to work quite as hard, never aimed quite as high as his brother.  
  
_Well fuck that_ , Dan thinks, as he looks around the shore of Lake Ontario at this event thrown in his name, with his own campaign money. He’s been shaking hands since he got there: “Hi, my name is Dan Egan, and I’m running for the congressional seat that Tom Pollard is vacating—” and the old folks seem to love him, he puts on all his charm for the elderly women who call him “sweetie.” His opponents are testing negative attacks on him and he knows it’s because they see him as a genuine threat. He’s polling in second place, but just barely. With the campaign in full swing, he’s barely sleeping, but does it matter? He’s finally in the game. And Dave, whose brotherly veneer of friendliness has always been stretched thin over a thick coat of smug self-satisfaction, can go fuck himself, because Dan might be the family fuck-up when it comes to his personal life but he’s finally getting what he always wanted and that’s worth it to him.  
  
  
  
  
The problem, and the thing Dan never saw coming, is that the whole family fucking _loves_ Jonah.  
  
Not immediately, and not without some hesitation, particularly on his dad’s behalf. But Dan’s okay with the hesitation. Part of this, he can’t deny, is about wanting to piss them off. _Oh, you’re disappointed that I have yet to get married and knock up a pretty blonde wife to match Dave and Sarah in the Christmas card picture? Too bad, I just moved in with fucking Big Bird and we are never getting married even though he wears a ring to communicate to strangers that he’s taken._ He knows, on some level, that it’s probably pretty immature to carry this chip on his shoulder all this way.  
  
The irony is that Jonah loves Dan’s family, too. And he knew this would happen, and this is why he waited so long to introduce them – not because he was avoiding their reactions, but because he knew Jonah would fall for their functional nuclear middle-class charm. Jonah comes from a family of fucked-up rich WASPs who lie and cheat and drink way too much and backstab each other and as a result half the Kane family is disavowed and barred from the holiday get-togethers and family reunions. His mom’s been married four times and Jonah grew up as a spoiled only child with apparently zero fucking friends and a revolving door of stepdads, so no wonder he is who he is today.  
  
The Egans may be so fake-happy that it makes Dan’s teeth ache to be in the same room with them for more than a couple hours, but they’re also aggressively tolerant and irritatingly hand-wave-y about their kids’ life choices, even if Dan can still pick up their disappointment vis-à-vis his particular timeline. Part of him had really hoped that making things appear more serious with Jonah would provoke them into raising a discussion about the issue, at which point Dan could tell them to fuck off. Or, at least, he could say something polite to that effect and then spend the rest of the month rehashing the argument in his head and in the shower.  
  
But of course that’s not what’s happening, because the Egans (and he thinks about them in those terms, in third person, as if he’s not even a member of the immediate family) will never give Dan what he wants. If he’s being truthful, he’s never felt at home in his own family.  He’d trade places with Jonah in a heartbeat if it were possible, because at least then, his ambition wouldn’t be treated like some kind of curious symptom of a larger disorder. Nobody would act like he should be happy raising two kids with a sixth grade teacher in the city where he grew up, like it’s some kind of inherent flaw that he has always aspired to power instead of complacent happiness. If Jonah’s a disappointment because he hasn’t flown higher, Dan feels like a disappointment for climbing too high without looking back.  
  
He’d take the shitty stepdads and the easier access to power over the Catholic guilt and aggressive niceness he’s grown up with, and if that makes him a shit, then so be it.  
  
  
  
  
“So Jonah,” his mom says that night. Dan’s just gotten home from the third of three campaign parties to find the whole family, sans his dad, on the back deck, Jonah folded into an Adirondack chair with a beer in hand in the middle of the whole bunch. “You went to Dartmouth, didn’t you? Was politics always the plan?”  
  
Dan drags up a chair of his own and takes the beer his brother hands him as Jonah nods. “I mean, my family is – a lot of us are in politics. My grandfather was a senator, and my uncle is Jeff Kane?” The name provokes only shrugs and quizzical looks from the rest of Dan’s family, so Jonah clarifies: “He controls the senior vote in New Hampshire. So he’s a pretty powerful guy. I just always figured I’d follow in his footsteps.”  
  
Dan nearly chokes on his beer, but quickly manages to turn his laugh into a hacking cough to cover. His mother shoots him a reproachful look as she follows up, “And your father? What does he do?”  
  
Now it’s Jonah’s turn to look uncomfortable as he shifts awkwardly in his chair. “I, uh – he works on Wall Street. Or at least he did. I don’t know, we don’t really have much of a relationship.”  
  
“Mom, you’re prying,” Dan interjects, but Jonah shakes his head.  
  
“Nah, it’s fine. He and my mom split when I was a kid. It’s not really that big of a deal. He got back in touch after he heard I was working at the White House but it didn’t really go well, so I’m not really sure what he’s doing now.” Jonah takes another swig of his beer, then adds, “My stepdad’s a physical therapist. If that’s of any interest.”  
  
“Yeah, Mark’s a great guy,” Dan cuts in again, lying through his teeth but desperate to change the subject to something less uncomfortable. Jonah shoots him an unreadable look, but it’s Dave who speaks up next.  
  
“Sorry, Jonah, you’ll have to forgive our mom,” he says magnanimously. “It’s just been so long since Dan’s brought anybody home, she’s naturally curious. Right? God, it must have been since – Andrea? Must have been since Andrea, right, Sarah?”  
  
“Must have,” Sarah nods along, and Dan glares knives into them both, daring them to say any more. But it’s too late. Jonah’s already perked up.  
  
“Who’s Andrea?” he asks, and Dave and his wife exchange a meaningful look before Dave opens his mouth to answer. But swiftly, sensing disaster, Dan cuts him off.  
  
“Nobody. Just someone I dated once,” Dan says. “A long time ago.”  
  
“You were engaged, weren’t you?” asks Sarah.  
  
Jonah glances at Dan, both eyebrows raised so high that they risk disappearing into his sloppy haircut. “Yeah?” he asks, his voice calm but clearly very interested. “I haven’t heard this story. Was this before or after Amy?”  
  
“Long before,” Dan says quickly. “I was right out of college, we were engaged for ten minutes, I broke it off at an Applebee’s. End of story. Does anybody want another goddamn beer?”  
  
“Wasn’t she somebody’s kid, too?” his mom says, now clearly invested in the conversation. “Some politician? Goodness, it was so long ago, it’s hard to remember –”  
  
“Her dad was the governor of Rhode Island!” says Dave gleefully. “Something – Wesley. Norm Wesley, remember? He was the frontrunner for the Republican nomination fourteen years ago, for about three weeks.”  
  
“Yes,” Dan says coldly. “A fascinating story. I’m going to head up now. Jonah, if you want to –”  
  
“I think I’m gonna stay out here, actually,” Jonah says, cocking a brow again. “It’s a beautiful night. No mosquitos yet, or anything.”  
  
“Really? They’ve been biting the shit out of me,” Dan mutters. He slides the glass deck door shut behind him with a thud and glances over his shoulder as he walks back into the house to see Jonah scoot his chair closer to Dave and Sarah.  
  
Inside, just outside the guest bedroom, he runs into his father, a newspaper tucked under one arm. “Everybody’s outside,” Dan announces flatly. “I’m going to bed.” He doesn’t wait for an answer before shutting the bedroom door behind him and popping an Ambien.  
  
He’s asleep before Jonah comes in.  
  
  
  
  
Dan’s up early the next morning, holed up in his dad’s study, banging out calls to potential donors. He’s on a roll today, has raised almost $1500 by the time Jonah barges in, holding two plates of syrupy blueberry pancakes. Dan shoots him a glare as he sets down both plates on the desk and walks back out, only to return half a minute later with two cups of coffee.  
  
“Thank you, Mrs. O’Brien, and I look forward to seeing _you_ at church next Sunday as well,” he finishes as Jonah sits down across from him, pulling one of the plates toward him and picking up the knife and fork perched precariously on top. Dan hangs up and glances down at the plate. “What’s this?”  
  
“Your mom made pancakes,” Jonah replies, Captain fucking Obvious before his morning coffee. “She told me to bring yours in to you –”  
  
“Right,” Dan says. “So you’re just going to eat in here?”  
  
“Why not? It’s ten minutes out of your day, big fuckin’ deal.”  
  
“Interesting,” he says, stabbing a piece of pancake and running it through a pool of syrup. “I figured you’d rather be out there letting my mother brief you on all my previous relationships.”  
  
Jonah swallows, frowning. “Don’t get passive-aggressive on me. _You’re_ the one who didn’t tell me you were engaged once. Dug your own fucking grave there, dude.”  
  
“It was fourteen years ago. I didn’t really think it mattered that much.”  
  
“You said you were ‘just out of college.’ That’s more than fourteen years.”  
  
“A few years out of college. Does it fucking matter?” Dan asks, his annoyance becoming more and more palpable in the small room. “What, do you think Andrea Wesley is gonna come popping out of thin air to break us up? I haven’t heard from her in years.”  
  
With a shrug, Jonah picks up his coffee mug, the Egan-Blass Commercial Realty logo shiny and new on its side. _Goddamnit._ Dave’s influence is everywhere in this house, so much more strongly felt than Dan’s own, even down to the kitchen cabinets. “I just thought it was interesting.”  
  
“Yeah, well,” Dan mutters. “Why are you so obsessed with my family in the first place?”  
  
“I’m not _obsessed_ with them,” Jonah says. “I _like_ them. They’re fucking normal people. It’s like a fun mystery to try to figure out how you came out of the same gene pool. I’m guessing some kind of mutation gone bad –”  
  
“Okay, you can fuck off.”  
  
“I’m _sorry_ ,” Jonah says. “But it’s true. I like them. Your sister-in-law’s pretty hot, by the way. She the one you banged that one time?”  
  
“Sarah? Oh, no. That was actually Katie. Dave’s college sweetheart –”  
  
“Jesus, Dan.” Jonah actually sounds disgusted this time, and Dan rolls his eyes, impaling another piece of pancake on his fork. Like Jonah has any room to judge him. Like Jonah isn’t completely shameless and gross in his own way.  
  
He doesn’t say anything, though, just focuses on cutting what remains of his breakfast into careful, even squares while looking through his list of potential donors for his next victim. The Catholics have all been surprisingly generous – he guesses the Diocese hasn’t gotten around to checking Politico for the latest on his relationship status, or else his childhood spent as an altar boy at Our Lady of Victory is paying dividends he never knew about. The cold-calling for donations is the worst part, and he’d allow himself to truly loathe it if that were productive in any way, but it isn’t, so he sighs and sucks it up and begins to dial the next number. He expects Jonah to take that as his cue to leave, but as usual, he’s dense enough to ignore whatever social cues are being thrown at him, and instead continues to sip his coffee as he watches Dan make the call.  
  
“Mrs. O’Connor? Hi, I’m sorry to bother you. My name is Dan Egan and I’m running for the congressional seat Tom Pollard is vacating, and I was hoping I could take a minute to talk to you about the upcoming primary election –” He lets himself fade onto autopilot. A few rejections and one meager donation later, he sets down the phone and looks up to notice that Jonah is still there, scrolling through his own phone.  
  
“You’re still here,” he says pointedly.  
  
Jonah looks up, nods. “Yeah,” he says. “I just updated your Instagram. ‘Democracy at work on a beautiful Memorial Day while reflecting on those who have served. Hashtag thanks for your service.’” He holds up the phone to Dan, who takes it grudgingly. It _is_ a good picture of him, lost in a phone call with his coffee cup in hand, unshaven but not exactly unkempt in his favorite old Cornell t-shirt. “Now you should get one of me, so I can post it for you in a couple hours. ‘ _Two_ delicious breakfasts, am I right?’”  
  
“First off, gross, and second, that’s bound to do _so_ much more harm than good,” says Dan.  
  
“It was a joke,” Jonah sighs. He forks a piece of pancake into his mouth, glancing down at his plate as he chews with a pensive expression, and without thinking, Dan snaps a couple photos in quick succession. They’re not exactly flattering, per se – Jonah’s expression is kind of wonky, and he’s obviously mid-chew in all of them – but the light is streaming in through the study windows and hitting him in a way that looks fresh and warm and almost cinematic. And the photos are intimate and unguarded, like a peek into a life that they don’t really lead. Dan may not be the photographer here, but he’s good enough at PR to know a money shot when he sees one.  
  
But he doesn’t post the photos. He’s about to, but something stops him just as his thumbs are hovering over the screen, trying to settle on an appropriate hashtag. Instead, he exits the app and simply sends one of the shots to his own phone, the final one, where Jonah is barely looking up into the lens, newly half aware of the camera on him. It’s _too_ intimate, and for some reason, he doesn’t think he wants to share it at all.  
  
“Sorry,” he mutters, handing Jonah his phone back after quickly deleting the shots. “None of them really came out.”  
  
Jonah rolls his eyes. “Of course not,” he sighs, pocketing it.  
  
Dan doesn’t really exhale fully until he leaves the room, plates clinking together in his hand all the way down the hall. The next time Jonah comes out here, he’s staying in a goddamn hotel.  
  
  
  
  
“The thing about your dad,” Dan says offhandedly. “You’ve never talked about that before.”  
  
“Hm?” Jonah looks up from whatever stupid game he seems to be playing on his phone. “What about my dad?”  
  
“You just never talk about him.” Dan turns over in the guest bed, laying on his back and staring up at the long crack that runs along the ceiling. He traces it with his eyes, imagines it’s a fault, envisions it splitting open and bringing the whole house shaking and crumbling down atop them. “I don’t know. It’s just interesting. You never talked about that before the other night and now I’m just interested.”  
  
In his periphery, he sees Jonah half shrug, looking back down at his phone screen. “There’s not a lot to tell.”  
  
“Kind of sounds like there is.”  
  
“Yeah. Whatever.” With a hesitant sigh, Jonah drops his phone on the nightstand and flips off the lamp. It’s a little too warm to sleep under the blankets, even with the window open and a slight breeze coming through the screen. Dan’s sprawled on top of the sheets, not touching Jonah, his body temperature absolutely ideal. It takes Jonah a few moments to find a position that complements his, but when he’s finally comfortable on his stomach, he speaks up again: “It’s just… it’s complicated.”  
  
“You guys don’t have a relationship or anything?”  
  
“Nah. He kinda – I don’t know. Do you want the whole story?”  
  
“ _Please_.”  
  
“It’s not that long. He and my mom were college sweethearts, they had me when they were in their twenties, he regretted getting tied down young, bounced when I was seven. Remarried when I was in high school and did the whole Family 2.0 thing and I just wasn’t really a part of his life from there on out.”  
  
“I always thought you were an only child,” Dan says.  
  
Jonah snorts. “Might as well be. It’s not like I was in any of _those_ family pictures.” There’s a brief silence, and then he adds, “Look, don’t fucking feel sorry for me, okay? I’m cool with it. He’s a dick. We had lunch a few years ago, it didn’t go well, I told him to fuck off and it’s fine now.”  
  
“You don’t seem fine,” observes Dan mildly.  
  
“Yeah, okay, you’re one to talk—”  
  
“You’ve seen how my family is.”  
  
“They’re perfectly nice people!” says Jonah. “I mean, yeah, Dave’s a little bit of a prick, but you guys are related. I’m surprised he’s not way worse.”  
  
Dan shakes his head. He can still see the crack in the ceiling as his eyes grow accustomed to the dark, and now all he can imagine is a flood of spiders pouring out of it, covering the ceiling, dropping down onto the bed like some sort of nightmare piñata or some shit. “You don’t really understand,” he mutters, shutting his eyes to try to block out the mental image. “It’s not that. They just don’t – they don’t get me.”  
  
“Okay, Holden fucking Caulfield—”  
  
“I’m being serious,” Dan snaps. “They’ve always acted like there’s something wrong with me. Because I don’t want to be like them, and I’m not happy living in my hometown like a fucking chump and going to Chili’s and Outback Steakhouse every Friday night and acting like that’s exactly what I always wanted.”  
  
“Outback is delicious,” Jonah says, and Dan groans.  
  
“No, it’s not, and that’s not the point,” he says, “you’re getting bogged down in the details.”  
  
“No, I see the point,” says Jonah. “It’s just – you gotta let that shit go. They see you differently than you see yourself. You’re not responsible for any of that, though. You can either dwell on it or just say fuck it and let them see what they wanna see and just keep doing you. You know?”  
  
In the silence, Dan can hear the chorus of crickets chirping in the grass outside. He turns over onto his side, coming face-to-face with Jonah, eyes open in the dark. “That’s weird.”  
  
“What? That I actually gave you semi-decent advice?”  
  
“I mean – yes. No. It’s just that Amy told me the exact same thing once. That I see myself differently and it’s not necessarily a bad thing.”  
  
Jonah offers a half shrug, raises a hand and rests it heavily on Dan’s back, doesn’t move. His hand is broad and warm and it feels oddly comforting, even in the heat, and Dan relaxes into it.  
  
“It’s good advice,” Jonah finally says. “You should’ve taken it then.”  
  
“Yeah,” says Dan, as he feels the Ambien start to kick in, washing over him in waves. As he’s drifting off, he licks his lips, suddenly feels like he has something to say. “Jonah.”  
  
“Yeah?” Jonah’s voice is low and rough and suddenly Dan isn’t sure what he was going to say after all.  
  
“—nothing,” he murmurs finally, and he can feel Jonah exhale, breath fanning softly across his face.

 

* * *

  
  
  
**VI.**  
  
The days leading up to the primary are a nightmare. Dan has never felt so alive.  
  
He pulls ahead in the polls by the second week of June, even against charges of carpetbagging and two strong rivals. He hasn’t come this far to get beat by some up-jumped city councilor, who yammers on and on about her kids, whose direct mail features family vacation photos and stresses how she’s lived in Rochester her whole life. Like that matters. Like Lona Craig, some bumpkin from upstate, is really going to be able to adapt to the D.C. chain of command like someone who’s been navigating it his whole life. That’s the platform Dan’s campaign adopts, anyway, and between that and the PAC money he manages to solicit and the party support he’s pulling in, it’s hardly a contest from there on out. His ballot designation: Dan Egan, political strategist. His slogan: _Egan for Congress—Experience and Expertise_. That’s Leigh’s brainchild, and they ride it all the way to the polls.  
  
Dan’s never felt so alive, but he’s also never been so busy, even at the height of his D.C. bounce. He writes all of his own policy papers, has his two smart Cornell kids on opposition prep. The goal is to get younger people to turn out, to mobilize the 18-35ers using social media and charm. Jonah’s all on board with that, takes over his social media when he has a spare moment outside of the Ohio Democrat’s campaign he’s working on already. His campaign propaganda features his D.C. network heavily. He’s doing six diner meet-and-greets a week on average. He’s fucking flying.  
  
Anyway, it’s all over when he gets Pollard’s endorsement, followed by the _Democrat and Chronicle_ endorsement shortly thereafter. By the night of the primary, he’s worn out, he’s not sleeping, and his chief of staff has just handed in his letter of resignation, but the concession phone call from Councilwoman Craig after the votes have been counted is worth it.  
  
“Holy shit,” he says as he hangs up. The entire team is sequestered in the campaign office. He’ll soon have to leave cheery voicemails for the other candidates, a prelude to asking for their endorsements in the general, but that’s tomorrow. It’s three in the morning and he’s worn out as fuck, yawning as the rest of the team celebrates. _Holy fuck. We did it. I did it_.  
  
His phone buzzes against his leg; he reaches into his pants pocket to retrieve it. A text from Jonah, stuck back in Ohio’s 13 th. _Any news???_  
  
_We fucking DID IT_ , he types back, all caps feeling downright necessary. _I won, I’m running._  
  
_FUCK YOU CRAIG_ , comes the immediate reply, followed by a string of emojis. Dan snorts and watches as two more texts come in quick succession: _I knew you were gonna win, fuckin crushing it dude_ , and then _, No seriously this is amazing I love you and im so proud of you_.  
  
He frowns. Stares at the last text. Waits for another to come in, a clarification, notice that it was a typo, the textual equivalent of misspeaking. Nothing.  
  
It’s three in the morning and he can write this off. He taps out another text, then erases it, not sure of what he wants to say at all. Then someone hands him a beer and he places his phone back in his pocket. He’ll respond later. He’ll deal with this in a few minutes. Not right now.  
  
  
  
  
When he gets back to D.C., the air is so sticky-hot and humid it feels as if he’s walked into someone’s mouth. It’s Wednesday. He has the week and the weekend to get his shit in order and figure out his next move. Which, at this point, seems inevitable: he’s moving to New York, if only part-time, if only temporarily.  
  
Dan takes a cab back to his place, pounding out emails and texts the entire drive. The house is cold and empty when he gets home, and he almost calls out Jonah’s name on instinct before remembering that he’ll still probably be stuck back in Ohio. Instead, he makes his way to the bedroom, drops his bag on the floor without bothering to unpack, and falls onto the bed, his tie only half undone before he’s falling into a deep sleep.    
  
He wakes up to a hand shaking his shoulder. “Fuck off,” he mumbles reflexively, before opening his eyes to a squint to see Jonah sitting beside him on the bed. “Ugh. How long was I out?”  
  
“I have no idea? I _just_ got in,” Jonah says. “It’s nine-thirty.”  
  
“Too long, then,” Dan says. He shuts his eyes and then sighs, feeling himself begin to wake up fully. “Ugh. I’m up. Never mind.” He turns onto his side, rubbing gritty eyes and yawning. Jonah reaches out to pull Dan’s undone tie out from his collar, taking it in one hand and idly rubbing the blue silk between his fingers. Dan watches, exhausted, his mind still cloudy from exhaustion and the ill-advised nap.  
  
“It’s fine,” Jonah says. “Congratulations, by the way. Sorry I missed it.”  
  
“Sorry your candidate lost,” Dan shrugs in reply.  
  
Jonah returns the shrug. “Fuck Ohio,” he says bitterly. “You know why so many famous astronauts are from Ohio? Because they all just wanted to get as far away from that shithole state as possible.”  
  
“Fuck the Midwest,” Dan mumbles. “Bunch of pig-fucking inbreds. No, wait, that’s the South. Bunch of corndog-guzzling… insurance sales reps. I don’t know. I’m still tired.”  
  
Jonah snorts with laughter. “You’re losing your touch, dude,” he says, easing down onto the mattress next to Dan. “Gotta step your game up.” Dan rolls his eyes wearily. He’s about to mutter an acidic _Fuck you_ before Jonah leans forward and kisses him softly, once, before pulling away to roll onto his back on the bed.  
  
“Funny thing,” Dan says, staring across the room at his reflection in the full-length mirrors that hang on the closet doors. He looks tired and rumpled and not so great, and he winces, averting his eyes back to Jonah, who still has his tie clutched loosely in one hand as he sprawls on the duvet. “I, ah, lost my chief of staff. He got into a grad program in California.”  
  
“Ah,” Jonah says. “That sucks.”  
  
“Yeah,” says Dan. “So I’m thinking I need to hire from inside D.C. this time. It’s gonna be a long five months. I need someone familiar with the game, you know? And preferably someone I already have a working history with—”  
  
“Mm,” mumbles Jonah, clearly not listening. Dan heaves a meaningful sigh.  
  
“Jesus Christ, Jonah,” he says. “Do you want to do it or not?”  
  
Jonah furrows his brow, his eyes shooting open as the question fully hits him. “Be your chief of staff?”  
  
“Just for the election,” Dan clarifies. “Why not you? You’re already in my personal space 24/7. Leigh’s managing the whole campaign staff as is, but she’s already going a little bit nutty and I don’t want her to pull an Amy before November. And if I have to vet any more potential staffers I’m going to lose my fucking mind.”  
  
“Huh.” Jonah’s still frowning. He sits up, fiddling with the tie in his hand. Looking at it and not at Dan. “What’s the catch?”  
  
“No catch,” Dan says, growing frustrated. “I just want you to come work with me, asshole.”  
  
“In New York, though?”  
  
“That’s where the campaign office is – _oh_. Jesus. Is that what this is about?”  
  
Jonah shrugs. “I’m fucking _crushing_ it here. I don’t know if leaving D.C. for five months is a good move, strategically.”  
  
“You hate D.C. You say it all the time.”  
  
“Yeah, but I don’t want to _leave_ D.C. during the midterms to work in some small town—”  
  
“It’s not a small town, it’s the third-largest metropolitan area in New York State,” Dan says in a monotone, the figures coming to him reflexively.  
  
Jonah shakes his head. “It’s not that. It’s the atmosphere. Dude. I could have just gotten Uncle Jeff to get me some sweet gig up in Concord if I wanted to stay in the Northeast the rest of my life.”  
  
“It’s not the rest of your life, it’s _five months_ ,” Dan snaps. “And the only reason I’m asking you instead of one of the many other, much more qualified people in the mix is because I fucking missed you and wanted you there with me these past few weeks. Okay? The primary was the hard part, and that’s over. You realize that the likelihood of me winning this seat is pretty much 100%? Just come work with me and we’ll figure it out from there. Okay?”  
  
The silence screams between them for a few moments, Dan’s heavy breathing the only sound audible in the room. He knew this was a stupid idea, realized from the start that Jonah probably wouldn’t say yes in the first place, would realize it was more of a demotion than anything else—and Jonah’s attached to D.C., to the illusion of power, to all-nighters and appended workplace designations as points of pride. Actual power isn’t the end goal for him, so much as being able to walk into a room and shout his own name and have people, at least a couple people, turn around and listen. It’s the biggest difference between them, and the one that’s probably going to tear them apart, Dan thinks.  
  
But then he opens his mouth to speak and Jonah cuts him off. “I’ll do it,” Jonah says.  
  
Dan blinks. “Seriously?”  
  
“Yeah,” shrugs Jonah. “It’s five months out of this swamp-ass town. And the whole power couple thing, there’s gotta be some way we can make that work for your image. Like some kind of House of Cards shit, but with better P.R.”  
  
“Or, like, the second thing we think of, but yeah,” Dan says, his mind immediately kicking back into first gear, whirring with possibilities. “Shit. Yeah. Okay, we’re gonna need coffee and then I want to get Leigh and Alex Thorne on a strategy call –”

 

* * *

 

  
**VII.**  
  
So the next few months are a fever dream.  
  
They’re winning. They’re _winning_. Jonah turns out to be a somewhat better chief of staff than Dan initially anticipated. He stands by while Dan eviscerates the deserving, ready to dispose of the remains in the aftermath; smiles smugly when he delivers news of a bump in the polls against their opponent—who, it turns out, is Roy Stern, the county school board president. Roy Stern knows Dave Egan well, doesn’t like him any more than Dan does, but he’s also running a nasty campaign against Dan, all dog-whistle terms like “family values” and “protecting the American dream.” It’s low and shady and not issue-based at all, which Dan understands strategically, but doesn’t respect. There’s no way this guy can beat him on experience or policy, so he’s turning to the low-hanging fruit, trying to get the nice Christians riled up about his personal life.  
  
The irony, Dan thinks, is that if the voters knew what he and Jonah were getting up to during the campaign, they might think Stern has a point. He thinks this from the supply closet in the campaign office at midnight on a Wednesday, his hands threaded through Jonah’s hair, alternating soft and sharp tugs as he keeps up a running commentary that would torpedo the entire campaign if a recording were released. They haven’t worked together like this since the White House, and it’s as if their old dynamic never changed, all argumentative sniping at each other leading to feverish hate-fucking in the empty office once everyone else fucks off at night. The difference, though, is that in public, they’re Mr. and Mr. Domestic. They’re all cashmere sweaters and white teeth smiles, declawed and unassuming. They pose for a set of professionally-taken photos, Jonah in a blue sweater vest and Dan in one of his nicer suits, just in case the need for a press release regarding their relationship arises.  
  
They’ve even created a narrative by now, a sort of invented timeline for their fake-real relationship that doesn’t account for all the times they fucked each other over for fun and profit in the early days. Dan’s always had a knack for this, used to make his living as a speechwriter, after all, and the thing is, the narrative is strong. It’s solid and interesting and kind of romantic, but creatively devoid of clichés. It’s the kind of perfectly invented political relationship that Dan always figured he might like to have for real, with anyone other than Jonah (who occasionally veers off-script to fuck with him, knowing it will have consequences, laughing and sneering through the dressing-down that follows).  
  
The _other_ thing, the bigger thing that weighs heaviest on Dan’s conscience, is that it’s becoming hard to differentiate between what’s fake and what’s real. The whole thing is a messy blur of fake smiles and pet names and real backbiting and insults and the simultaneous rushes of power that make them both better, harder, stronger. They grant a single joint interview to Wendy Keegan at the Post, a shameless puff piece made dangerous by the fact that this is Mike McLintock’s wife and she’s got both their numbers, but it comes out fine and gets their names out in the blogosphere for another press push during the dog days of summer.  
  
It’s harder and harder to know what’s real and what isn’t, when their entire life is lived in public at this point. They smile affably in public and get smug and bitter in the office and as soon as they’re alone, the claws come out, picking and pushing at each other until it boils over. Dan’s always the first to snap, grabs Jonah by the tie to pull him down to his level and hisses a sharp “Listen, knucklefuck, don’t ever forget who you work for,” and Jonah laughs in his face until he earns a warning smack or a yank of the hair and then it’s on. It’s almost just like old times, Dan thinks, for better and for worse; as stress relief goes, there are worse avenues to take, although after a month of working together, they’ve run out of new surfaces in their subletted apartment on which to fuck.  
  
  
  
  
The Fourth of July is a calm, clear break in the choppy waters of the campaign. They spend it in Nashua, at Jonah’s behest; Dan feels deeply anxious about the prospect of leaving the campaign, but since relocating temporarily to Rochester, the constant presence of his family has become suffocating, and ultimately the latter factor outweighs the former. He needs to get the hell out of the fishbowl and the campaign office. They get a full two days almost to themselves, and Dan feels himself start to breathe again, decompressing.  
  
Jonah notices. “You’re looking almost human,” he says, looking rather pink and sunburned himself.  
  
“And you look like a fucking lobster,” Dan says. “Seriously, dude, you should have just worn sunscreen—”  
  
“Yeah, whatever. I’m gonna have a totally sweet tan after this.”  
  
“Or skin cancer.”  
  
“You’re gonna get cell phone cancer. We’re all getting cancer in the end,” Jonah shrugs lackadaisically, and Dan rolls his eyes but doesn’t protest when Jonah leans down to kiss him under the fireworks, in front of God and his stepdad and the entire Kane family. It feels strange and almost wrong to be performing this kind of romance away from the cameras and reporters and constituents they have to woo, but he’s beginning to find a certain level of comfort in the artifice. It’s almost a ballet, the roles they slip into in public; the way Jonah beams on cue when Dan touches his hand, how it’s become second nature to lean into each other. There’s a strange rush to the performance. It’s like they’re getting something over on everyone else, pretending to be so functional and conventional and _normal_ in public.  
  
Jonah kisses him beneath red, white, and blue, and Dan smirks against his lips and remembers how desperate and wrecked he looked, not even struggling against Dan’s too-tight grip just twenty-four hours earlier, and they might be fucking liars but it feels so good to get away with it.  
  
  
  
  
August is a slog, September is a holding pattern. The race doesn’t get close until October, when Dan royally bungles an interview with a local news reporter, a fuck-up of monumental proportions he’s going to spend the rest of his life trying to forget. And suddenly an election that should be a gimme turns upside down, and for the next month, it’s anybody’s game. The campaign is suddenly playing defense. Stern’s attack ads paint Dan as an out-of-touch Washington insider, the worst kind of white liberal, a menace to family values and everything good and American and Christian. It’s dirty mud-slinging of the lowest kind and Dan’s furious, but he’s also ready to fight back—  
  
“I want you to go find the motherfucker responsible for this ad and bring him back here so I can _skin him alive_ ,” Dan hisses at two of his staffers, hitting pause on the latest attack ad. “This is the Hin-Dan-burg Disaster and I need a fucking cleanup crew. _Now_.” The freeze frame onscreen is a candid photo of him and Jonah with the text “HIRED HIS LOVER AS HIS CHIEF OF STAFF” superimposed in white text on top, and it makes him ill, knowing that despite having played the game right, done everything in his power to control this narrative, it’s still coming back to betray him. _Like people in D.C. don’t hire people they’re sleeping with all the time. Like that’s not completely normal_ , he thinks. He digs blunt nails into his palms until he sees his knuckles turn splitting white and he feels like screaming.  
  
He shows up to his brother’s house later that night. Glenwood Road is lined with stately Victorians set back from the street, but Dave’s is one of the nicest, three stories of neat white shingles and burgundy trim with a glassed-in sun porch. Dan strides up the walk past two Egan for Congress signs, takes the front porch steps two at a time, and rings the doorbell twice, then knocks until Dave pulls the door open, looking bemused.  
  
“Come on in,” he says, but Dan doesn’t wait, striding past him into the entryway.  
  
“Have you seen the newest Stern ad?” Dan asks, still seething. Dave walks with him, and together they stride through the house, past Sarah and the kids in the living room. Sarah gives him a little half-wave and a smile, but Brendan and Maddie barely look up from their iPads, and Dan barely notices any of them, still seeing red.  
  
Dave raises both eyebrows, sighs. “Yeah. I can’t say I’m shocked, but – ”  
  
“I need whatever you have on him,” Dan says bluntly. They walk into Dave’s office and Dan shuts the door behind them. “I know you have to have _something_. You’ve been on the school board for six years, there’s got to be –”  
  
“Danny, if I had something, I would’ve given it to you by now,” Dave says plaintively as he takes a seat at his desk. “The guy’s a shit, but he’s a shit in an irritatingly above-board way. No mistresses, no embezzling, nothing.”  
  
“He’s never even been in a fucking fight with the HOA?”  
  
“His wife is the head of the HOA.”  
  
“Jesus.” Dan exhales, leaning on Dave’s desk and hanging his head as he racks his brains. His hands dig into documents and the pages of a yellow legal pad, leaving finger-sized indents in the pages. “What about the wife? Is there anything we can pull on her?”  
  
“Then you’re no better than he is,” Dave says placidly, and Dan feels the bile starting to rise in his chest.  
  
“That’s the goddamn _point_ ,” he snaps, pacing the floor like a tiger in a cage. “I don’t give two shits about who’s better than who. This isn’t about taking the moral high ground, David, it’s about winning. I know you never understood that, but –”  
  
“Whoa, whoa, what does that mean?” Dave asks, and Dan takes a deep breath, tries not to let the words come pouring out.  
  
“Nothing,” he says coldly. “That’s not the point. The point is that I’m not going to lose this time. You _know_ Stern. You must know some way to break him.”  
  
Dave leans back in his desk chair, folding his arms and staring up at the ceiling. “Maybe you don’t have to break him. Maybe you can just – outsmart him.”  
  
“I don’t know –”  
  
“Why don’t you and Jonah get engaged?”  
  
Dan stops pacing abruptly and turns to look back at Dave, desperate for a sign that this is a joke. The sign doesn’t come. Dave shrugs at his look of conclusion, adding, “Assuming you’re not already, I mean. He does wear that ring –”  
  
“He just doesn’t like other people hitting on him,” Dan says dismissively. “If I were engaged, I would tell you –”  
  
“Well, I never know with you,” Dave shrugs again. “No, but I’m serious. Why don’t you get engaged? You have two choices here, basically – let Stern intimidate you, or just double down and tell him ‘Fuck you, we’re in love and –’”  
  
“We’re not necessarily –”  
  
“Danny, look. I’m not a political strategist here, I’m just calling it like I see it, _but_. You want young people to come out and vote for you? _You need to make it about this specific issue_. You get engaged, you tell everybody you’re planning a big June wedding, you own this, you make Stern look like the bigot for wanting to get in the way of this beautiful thing. It doesn’t even matter whether it’s real! You two could secretly hate each other for all I know –” Dan snorts at this, but Dave doesn’t seem to notice. “ – but what matter is how other people see you. And ultimately it doesn’t even matter if you two get married. Although – ”  
  
“Although _what_?” Dan says, curious in spite of himself.  
  
“You could both do worse,” Dave shrugs. “You always said you would only get married if it benefited you, and I understand that, but –”  
  
“No, you don’t –”  
  
“Maybe I don’t. You’re right. But you two are good together. I see how you two look at each other when you think the other’s not looking. You make a good team. You have a vested interest in him.” ( _A sweater-vested interest_ , Dan thinks, but doesn’t interrupt.) “If you really care about winning as much as I know you do, maybe you’re gonna have to compromise your admittedly warped principles a little bit here.”  
  
Dan says nothing in response, and Dave chuckles, getting up from his desk chair to walk him out. “I’m just saying,” he says as they reach the front door. “That’s what I’d do.”  
  
“You’re not me.”  
  
“No. But I’m a lot happier than you. Think about it.”  
  
  
  
  
He thinks about it on the drive back to the campaign office. He thinks there’s only one thing worse than knowing that Dave is right. He thinks that _one worse thing_ is knowing he’ll have to prove Dave right himself.  
  
He walks into the office and straight to Jonah’s desk. Jonah’s still there, but he’s alone; Leigh would have been the second-to-last to leave and she packed up even before Dan left. “Hey, man,” Jonah says, gentle and beaten, looking up from his desk. “Sorry, I was actually just about to leave – you want to go over your to-do list for tomorrow, or—?”  
  
“You want to get married?”  
  
Jonah blinks. His mouth hangs open in stricken confusion and he shakes his head slightly. “I, uh –”  
  
“For the campaign,” Dan rushes to clarify. “We tell Stern to go fuck himself. We get engaged. We get young people flocking to the polls to support the whole white liberal candidate planning a gay summer wedding and we make him look like an out-of-touch redneck bigot. The attack ads backfire. We use his own rhetoric against him. Then we continue doing exactly what we already do. Nothing changes.”  
  
Jonah just looks straight ahead. He’s twisting the ring on his finger, perhaps unconsciously. Dan can’t tell. “You sure?”  
  
“I’ve thought about it. Yeah.”  
  
“You don’t want to clear it with the rest of the staff first?”  
  
“You’re my fucking chief of staff. This is need-to-know basis information,” Dan says. “Everybody else’ll find out tomorrow.”  
  
Slowly, quietly, Jonah nods and clears his throat. “Okay. Yeah. This seems like an – um, a logical next step. Let’s do this shit.”  
  
Dan bites back a knowing smile. Because fuck if it was Dave’s idea. It might work. It might be a Hail Mary, but prayer might save this campaign in the end.  
  
They drive back to the rented apartment separately, Dan arriving a few minutes before Jonah. He walks into the empty apartment, flips on lamps but keeps the harsh overhead lights off, pours two bourbons and takes off his suit coat and folds up his sleeves. He’s on the couch when Jonah comes in, looking exhausted, and he holds up his glass. “Nightcap?”  
  
“Please,” Jonah mutters, pulling off his jacket and throwing it over the coat rack. He pushes his own sleeves sloppily up his forearms as he plops down beside Dan on the sofa, taking the drink he offers and immediately taking a sip. “Where’d you go when you left?”  
  
“Took a drive over to Dave’s,” Dan says truthfully. He’s swirling his drink around in the heavy crystal glass the subletting owners left behind, watching the rich amber liquid catching the low light of the room. It’s almost hypnotic. “Figured if anyone would have dirt on Stern, he would.”  
  
“Or at least he’d know where to look,” Jonah adds, sipping his bourbon.  
  
“Uh-huh.” Dan drains his glass. He puts his hand on the back of Jonah’s neck and squeezes down, his hand heavy with fatigue and warm and boozy. Jonah surrenders, just for the moment, closes his eyes and lets his shoulders slump and for a second Dan wonders if he’s about to physically crumble inward altogether, leaving behind just bones and dust and the tattered remains of one of his three nice new suits.  
  
Dan’s not sure who kisses who first this time, but it’s inexplicably _different_. It’s soft, almost tender, Jonah shakily putting down his glass to slide his fingers over Dan’s jaw and frame his face. Dan waits expectantly for the moment when the kiss turns savage, but it never comes; they make it all the way to the bedroom and it’s still not rough and competitive at all. His entire body is screaming _want_ and _need_  as Jonah pulls back just enough to unbutton Dan's shirt. His eyes flick up to Dan's and it's like he's looking for something else, and Dan wants to say _something else_ but what comes out is, in a voice so hoarse and muzzy it can't be his, “Gonna need you to fuck me."  
  
“Yeah,” says Jonah, nodding, a little frantic, and—

Dan’s on his back on the bed, Jonah's on top, slowly pushing into him, and he’s watching Jonah bite his lips from red to white to red again, his biceps defined in the low light from holding himself up—  
  
“Okay?” Jonah asks, flushing, and Dan nods, shifts, presses his forehead into Jonah’s neck. Kisses him once, twice, as Jonah starts to move, fucking him properly, still slow and soft and _deep_.  
  
It feels so unnatural, fucking as if a winner won’t be announced at the end, but when Dan opens his mouth to speak, the words don’t form. His fingers dig into Jonah’s upper arms as Jonah thrusts harder. “God,” he confesses in a breathless, blasphemous whisper. “Jesus. That’s so –”  
  
“I _know_.” Jonah’s hands slip a little on the sheets. Dan squeezes his eyes shut. It’s not just physical. It feels _real_.

They don’t talk about this after the fact. Dan takes a shower alone, rinses shampoo from his hair and watches it swirl down the drain. Better to treat it as an accident or a slip; can’t allow it to set a precedent.  
  
  
  
  
The engagement announcement, predictably, goes over gangbusters.  
  
They announce the day before the candidates’ debate at U of Rochester. Dan walks onstage to thunderous applause, waving to the crowd. The university’s gender studies program has lined up outside, waving flags and Egan for Congress signs. But the money shot comes during the debate itself, when Stern tries to dredge it up for a talking point.  
  
Dan fires back quickly enough, some properly-vetted spiel about America and freedom and not being able to choose who you love and having the courage to be yourself, blah blah fuckity blah. He’s pandering so hard he feels like he’s auditioning for a guest spot on RuPaul’s Drag Race, but it does the trick. The campaign team pulls the clip that very night, fires it off to their contacts at all the progressive clickbait sites, and they’re off to the races. “This Congressional Candidate Attacked His Opponent’s Sexuality. What Happens Next Will Amaze You,” reads the most viral of the headlines. It’s almost _too_ easy.  
  
“I know that wasn’t real, but it sounded great,” Jonah says, cagily, after Dan catches him hanging up on a suspicious phone call. “Where the fuck was that passion two months ago, when we could have used it?”  
  
Dan rolls his eyes. He doesn’t push it. He doesn’t press Jonah for details. Their mothers are both, strangely, seemingly over the moon about the whole situation; Dan’s mom gives an interview to the local paper, because somehow that seems appropriate. The next poll shows a seven point bump over Stern. He doesn’t allow himself to celebrate yet.

* * *

 

  
  
**VIII.**  
  
But he celebrates eventually, because there’s not so much more left to do.  
  
They hold onto their steady lead all the way heading into election day. Dan casts his ballot, pulls the lever for his own name, walks out of the polling place calm and steady. The rest of the day is a blur of numbers and predictions and sugar-free Red Bull, three TVs showing three different news feeds. Jonah thrusts a Caesar salad into his hand at one point. “Eat,” he says ungraciously. “If you have another breakdown right now I’m not gonna be able to deal with how bad it looks.”  
  
By eleven P.M., with ninety-six percent of the polling places recording, it’s all over. He’s at 54%, Stern’s at 46%. _There’s no coming back from that_ , he thinks. The whole office has been drinking since nine o’clock. Someone presses a beer into his hand and he takes a celebratory swig. The entire world seems bright and fuzzy with new possibility and yet he feels curiously empty, his senses dulled, the noise around him a dim roar. He can’t stop smiling, but he’s not sure if he’s happy or if it’s just an ingrained reflex by now.  
  
He won. For the first time in his life, really, maybe. He’s gotten what he wanted. It’s only up from here.  
  
  
  
  
“What are you thinking about?”  
  
Dan blinks. “Everything.”  
  
Jonah pulls into their driveway. Dan’s still smiling idly, but feeling blank and buzzed. He doesn’t mind this neighborhood, but he thinks he’d prefer something a little more stately for a permanent address. Maybe something closer to Dave’s neighborhood. “How do you feel about Victorians?” he asks, and off Jonah’s quizzical look, he adds, “the houses.”  
  
“I don’t know?” Jonah pulls the keys from the ignition and opens the door. Outside the air is sharp and cold, and it hits them both in the face like an ax blade. There’s frost on the ground and the trees are mostly bare, and they hurry to the door of the apartment, ducking around the wind as if they can dodge it. “Why?”  
  
As they duck inside the apartment, Dan breathes in the warmth of blessed central heating. “I was thinking – you know. Moving here. I don’t want to stay in this apartment. We can’t, obviously, the owners are going to be back on the first of December, so we should probably start looking for a new place. I know you liked Dave’s neighborhood –”  
  
Jonah turns to him as he takes off his coat, brow furrowed. “I never really said I was sold on the idea of moving.”  
  
Now it’s Dan’s turn to frown, as he hangs his own coat on the rack. “I mean, we don’t really have much of a choice now, right?” he says. “I won. You probably should have brought this up before. There’s not much we can do.”  
  
“I never said I was really on board –” Jonah shifts his weight, walking a precarious line. “Look, we always said we’d table the discussion for when we came to it. We’ve come to it. We should probably have it.”  
  
“Really? You want to have it _right fucking now_? You want to bring me down when my dick has never been metaphorically harder?” Dan’s genuinely irritated now, turning to face Jonah with venom on his breath. “You had a thousand and one goddamn chances to talk this out and you just decided to wait until the best night of my fucking life to bring it up? Jesus, Jonah, it’s like you can’t let me have one thing –”  
  
“You really think this is about you?” Jonah shoots back, indignant. “You could have asked me how I felt at literally any point leading up to this. You’re the one who chose to wait –”  
  
“I didn’t choose. You’re the one who played it off like it was no big deal,” Dan spits. “Fuck you. You know that? I thought we were in agreement here. If I won, we were gonna have to move. You’re the one who agreed to this fucking engagement, _to bolster my chances of winning_. And now you’re trying to turn around and go ‘Oh no, I didn’t necessarily agree –’”  
  
“So how do you think I feel?!” Jonah says. He’s shouting. They definitely shouldn’t be shouting, and yet. He’s shouting. Dan takes deep, steadying breaths in patterns of seven-nine-seven, refusing to let his anxiety take him down tonight. “How would you like it if I just told you that you had to pick up your whole life and move to some city you don’t give a shit about for my career? I don’t even fucking like it up here, Dan. You’d know that if you paid any attention to anyone but yourself and saw people for more than what they can do for you.”  
  
“That’s not true, and you know it,” Dan says, but Jonah’s shaking his head.  
  
“It’s completely fucking true. And you know what, Dan?” He’s pacing the floor now, tight circles and figure eights on the hard wood. “I’ve done a _lot_ for you. You don’t necessarily notice, but I’m – I can’t blame you for being who you are. But I also can’t do this anymore.”  
  
“So don’t.”  
  
There’s a long silence, and Dan hates it. He hates all of this. This should have been the best fucking day of his life and instead, there they are, and he senses that Jonah is about to say something that can’t be taken back. And then, right on cue, he says it.  
  
“I’m in love with you, and I never know how the fuck you feel about me from day to day,” he says, shifting back and forth again, making tentative eye contact with Dan and staring him down hard. “But it doesn’t fucking matter.” Another long pause, and then: “I’m going back to D.C. Find a new chief of staff. I’d promote from within. Andrew seems like a good fit.”  
  
In the silence that ensues, Dan waits for the fear and anger to hit him, either one of the two responses he's come to expect. Instead, he feels almost nothing at all. He’s blinded, blindsided, graceless. He walks into the bathroom and runs the shower but doesn’t get in, doesn’t even get undressed, just stares at the rapidly fogging mirror until he feels like he’s about to choke on the steam. He falls asleep on the bathroom floor, wakes up long enough to turn off the shower that has long run cold, then returns to his fitful sleep.  
  
He’s had the same recurring dream for years. An ocean of blood and he’s following the pull to an island in the middle of it, sometimes feeling a shark fin growing between his shoulder blades halfway through the swim. Selina used to figure prominently into it; Amy did too. In recent years, it’s been only Jonah, standing tall and imposing on the rock, leering at him more the closer he gets. Then he’s back in D.C., in Union Station, repeating the Catholic school Latin he’s all but forgotten in the waking world. Jonah’s there too, touches his hands, prays the rosary over his bloody knuckles even though he’s Protestant as they come. Dan always wakes after this part.  
  
But this time, Jonah never shows; Dan wanders the halls, every two steps an Ave Maria, feeling his blood churn and waiting for a sign.  
  
Jonah is gone when he wakes hours later. There’s a flash drive sitting on top of Dan’s laptop, with a post-it note attached. _I was going to give you this before. Congratulations, by the way. J._  
  
He’s numb as he pops the flash drive into his laptop. Both his phones are dead; he thinks he should charge them, assumes there’s been a deluge of congratulatory phone calls. He avoids checking his email, though, as he waits for the file to load.  
  
It’s a folder of photos. He doesn’t recognize the first, but the second and third are clearly from his Memorial Day meet-and-greet, and as he keeps scrolling, he realizes what this is. It’s _the_ narrative. It’s not the one they’ve adopted for the public, and it’s not a representation of their inter-office power dynamic, either. What it is – it’s the truth. Dan sitting on the deck at his parents’ house, glowering at his brother. Nashua on Independence Day, Jonah’s cousins’ kids sticky with red-and-blue snow-cone juice, clinging to either one of his hands – Dan remembers taking the photo, but wasn’t sure why it struck him as funny at the time, only that neither of them should ever have been trusted to spend five minutes around children without swearing, screaming, or threatening physical violence on some hypothetical third party. Dan on the trail, shaking hands and smiling so wide his face seems likely to split; the two of them, holed up in debate prep, foreheads practically touching over a thick folder of opposition research. A selfie Jonah had posted on social media, the two of them at a fucking pumpkin patch, the week before the election – orange-red autumn colors blazing and their coordinating wool coats and genuine smiles despite the contrived campaign-stop pose. Dan shouting into a phone, looking as if he’s been caught in the middle of a lycanthropic transformation. Several more photos just like it.  
  
He stops scrolling. It’s the picture he took on Memorial Day weekend – Jonah, in his t-shirt and bed-head, glancing up at the camera with a mouthful of pancakes. He doesn’t know how he got it. He could swear he deleted it from everything but his own phone almost immediately. He hasn’t looked at it, or even thought about it, in months.  
  
He’s angry at everything, it’s essentially his default state, but in this moment, he’s most angry at himself.

 

* * *

  
  
**IX.**  
  
So Dan sits down and writes.  
  
_TO: You, you fucking shithead  
RE: State of the Union  
  
JONAH –  
  
Consider this an internal memo of sorts with regard to our relationship.  
  
I am not someone who is comfortable talking about their feelings in person, namely because they are complicated and difficult to parse without jumping from point to point with little logical progression therein. I’m not good at relationships. I’m 41 and have never said the words “I love you” when I felt it, or felt it when I said it, which are two different things despite sounding semantically similar. I have used people unapologetically and without remorse to advance my own career, and I’ve done so consistently throughout my entire life.  
  
I have no fucking idea what you’ve ever seen in me.  
  
I thought this was an arrangement of convenience when it started. For years, I genuinely believed that this set-up was entirely about sex, about human contact, and about the ease with which we were able to  provide these things to each other when compared to the prospect of looking to get laid elsewhere. For a period of time, I also believed that this was just an extension of how much we obviously loathed each other, until it became clear that this loathing was far more performative than not. Between the mutual performativity, coupled with the occasional moments of emotional intimacy which began to slip through the cracks more and more as time went on, it started to occur to me that perhaps this was not exactly the convenient arrangement I had initially thought. It wasn’t until you began wearing a fake ring to communicate your unwillingness to sleep with other people that I began to take into consideration the long-term implications of our arrangement. But even this could be written off as a conditional act, not an assertion of emotional entanglement. And I was wrong to do so.  
  
Over the past couple years, and these last few months especially, I have taken so much for granted in this relationship—not least of which being my refusal to call it what it is. “Arrangement” sounds better to my ears. It sounds like a business deal in which feelings aren’t involved, in which I don’t have to feel responsible for how I may make you feel. The reality, however, is much more complicated.  
  
Why can’t you compartmentalize like I can? Why can’t you deal with complicated emotional issues when they become too big and unwieldy to ignore and not a moment before that? Why can’t we just go about the rest of our lives not talking about the things other people live to talk about? I don’t need assurance that you care about me. I don’t understand why you need it from me, when I’ve always gone out of my way to show you empathy that I don’t extend to very many other people, if I show it to anyone at all. Isn’t that good enough? Shouldn’t it be? The thing is, I don’t understand you or how your mind works, and I certainly don’t really understand your heart. I think everything is fine exactly the way we’re doing it, and I don’t need it to change. Yet I understand that you do, and I’m trying to put myself in your gigantic fucking clown shoes for once to try to understand how.  
  
I don’t need you to give anything up for me. I wouldn’t have done the same for you and I won’t ask you to do it for me.  
  
What I want is to make this work. I don’t know how to do that, and I’m honestly not sure that we’ll be successful in trying. But we’ve come so far in the past five years and I don’t want to start over with anyone else. I care about you, you asshole. I value you, even though there are infinite logical reasons why my value has been misplaced in the past. The point is that as of now, it isn’t. I made a bet with astronomical odds and against all of them, it paid off. I want to see this through until the end and I don’t want the end to come right now. I have so many more things that I want to say to you, but I can’t do it in writing. I’ll wait until I can do it in person. I’m coming back to D.C. as soon as possible.  
  
Don’t make up your mind until I get there.  
  
_  
  
  
Between the time his plane touches down at National and the time he can get a cab back to his place, it’s started raining. He’s underdressed for the temperature – how is it colder here than in New York? – and he’s shivering as he climbs out of the cab and swings his bag over his shoulder. He can’t find his keys in his coat pocket and instead settles for hitting the doorbell a couple dozen times in succession and augmenting with rapid knocks on the door.  
  
Jonah swings the door open after thirty seconds of knocking. He’s in jeans and a sweater that Dan loathes, all geometric prints on a beige cardigan, and it’s so goddamn ugly it knocks him sideways. There’s a moment where Jonah just takes him in, the wet hair and carry-on luggage and clear inability to form full sentences, and then—  
  
“Oh, great,” Jonah says, “it’s Colin fucking Firth.”  
  
“First off,” says Dan, “fuck you, _Jonad_.”  
  
He feels so stupid, standing on the front steps of his own goddamn house in a downpour like he’s in the cheesy third act of an uninspired romantic comedy, and he pushes past Jonah and walks inside, dropping his bag in the foyer and spinning back around. He has a split second in which to catch his breath before Jonah’s suddenly kissing him, bending down to clasp his face in both hands. It’s all tongue and teeth and inelegance for what feels like an eternity before they come up for air, and then he’s pulling away, leaving Dan blinking and still sopping wet in one of his better suits.  
  
“So,” Dan says uncertainly, sliding both hands into his pants pockets as Jonah scratches at the back of his own neck in visible awkwardness. “I guess that’s that, then –”  
  
“Oh, no, it fucking isn’t,” Jonah says. “You don’t get to send me an _encrypted PDF_ about the ‘state of the relationship’ and then just come back in and say ‘that’s that.’ We’re going to talk about this, and I don’t give a shit how uncomfortable it makes you.”  
  
“Fine,” Dan spits. “Can it wait twenty minutes? Can I wear dry clothes while I do it?”  
  
“You’re the one who opted for the whole Hugh Grant look in the first place. You can lie in the bed you made.”  
  
Dan takes a deep, steadying breath, exhales it to the count of seven. “Okay,” he says quietly. “Where do you want to start?”  
  
  
  
  
They start in the living room. They start with the memo. They start with the last three days. They start messily.  
  
“I just don’t understand why you can’t use words,” Jonah shouts. “You do this all the time, this fucking _ice man_ thing, and it doesn’t work.”  
  
“It works fine – ”  
  
“You know it doesn’t work fine and you know it never has. You can shove things down and compartmentalize all you want, but it’s going to come out sometime and it’s not gonna be healthy when it does.”  
  
“Then I’ll just deal with it. Jesus Christ, Jonah, you’re not my therapist –”  
  
“Because you refuse to see one!” Jonah’s shouting again. “What was your plan, anyway? Just spend the rest of this indefinite period pretending you don’t have feelings for me in private while also pretending that we’re some perfect domestic couple for your constituents? You’re just gonna ride that all the way to, what, you wanna be the first bisexual POTUS or something? Oh, my God, and don’t fucking flinch like that, _I_ can say it. That's fucked up, Dan.”  
  
Dan feels trapped. He feels the room growing increasingly smaller but he breathes in patterns, tries to go to his stupid mental beach or whatever his old therapist used to tell him to do, anything to avoid letting this conversation fuck him up. “I don’t do this on purpose,” he says plaintively, truthfully. “I don’t sit around trying to figure out the best way to avoid giving you whatever it is that you need. If you needed more from me, you could have just said so.”  
  
“I’ve _tried_ ,” Jonah sighs, incredulous. “You think I haven’t been trying? You think I’ve been wearing this ring for my own enjoyment?”  
  
“That was to let other people know you aren’t interested –”  
  
“There are other ways to do that! Fucking body language or some shit!” Jonah runs a defensive hand through his hair and exhales again. Dan frowns again, watching him seemingly shrink a good three inches into the couch, looking defeated. “I didn’t – it’s not that I really wanted that much more from you. You’re good. We’re good together. It’s just – some acknowledgment that this means something to you. Because it used to be that this was some kind of secret between us and I loved it, it was fucking awesome. Having this thing that only we knew about was –”  
  
“Exhilarating,” Dan nods, remembering.  
  
“Yeah. But then it just slowly flipped around. And now you can go to a fucking debate and tell your _opponent_ that we’re in love but you can’t say it to my face when it’s literally just the two of us in a room and it just - Jesus. I don’t know.” He pinches the bridge of his nose, shaking his head in obvious frustration. “I feel like you can’t function in a relationship unless some part of it is a lie.”  
  
Dan blinks, stung. Because Jonah isn’t wrong. It might be the most apt thing he’s ever said. “I’m sorry.”  
  
“Don’t be sorry, just be _better_!” Jonah explodes. And no, that’s it. That’s the most apt thing he’s ever said. And Dan doesn’t know how to respond.  
  
“Fuck,” he says, almost more to himself. “I didn’t – ” Jonah opens his mouth to speak again, and he holds up a preemptive hand, cutting him off. “No, hold on. No. You’re right. I’m a fucking liar and a shitty person. I already admitted that but I’ll admit it again. But Jesus. Do you know how many times I’ve wanted to tell you how I feel and stopped myself?”  
  
“Christ’s sake, _why_?!”  
  
“Because I – ” He pauses to find the words,  rephrases three times before he opens his mouth again. “I didn’t want to fuck this up. For me, for you, whatever. I thought if I said something, it would change – I don’t know, the balance of things.”  
  
“You had no problem changing _the balance of things_ whenever it suited you,” Jonah says. “You had no problem asking me to up and move to upstate New York for you—”  
  
“I never said you had to do that,” Dan protests, but Jonah cuts him off, shaking his head.  
  
“Well, I’m not going to,” Jonah says. “I made my mind up a while ago. D.C. is like, part of my DNA. And vice versa. I’m not leaving. I got offered another job here and I’m taking it.”  
  
This is the part that hits Dan like a truck, leaving him spinning and whiplashed. “You already accepted? That’s why you were acting so fucking weird and cagey these past couple weeks?”  
  
Jonah nods. “It’s, ah. Not officially, but yeah. It’s with another congressman. Robin Rees. From Maryland. So I’m gonna be here full-time.”  
  
This isn’t what Dan wanted and it’s not what he expected, and he’s barely breathing when he shuts his eyes and mutters, “Okay. Okay. How do we make this work?”  
  
“Work?” asks Jonah, and Dan slowly opens his eyes and fixes him with a look.  
  
“Well,” he says, choosing his words carefully, feeling gutted and vulnerable and raw but still capable of thinking on his feet. “I’m obviously not going to be in the House for the rest of my life. This is a stepping stone. I’m thinking two terms and then run for the Senate when Hallowes retires in four years. That gives me four years to write a book, get some signature legislation passed, get on a committee – I’m thinking Ways and Means – and then get our shit together for the long term. I run for Senate, I win, I get gun control or student loan reform passed, I’m untouchable, sooner or later I get made Whip and then it’s a short ride to Sec State. Which is the ultimate goal, by the way, not POTUS. You think I’m gonna give that up because you don’t want to move? Shit, Jonah, I’m going to be spending more time here than anywhere else. Fuck the constituents, they knew the deal when they voted for me.” He can feel his voice starting to break, and he’s trying to keep it together, and it’s so, so stupid that he can eviscerate staffers with no emotional fallout whatsoever but _this_ conversation is starting to break his façade. “If you want to leave, you can leave. But don’t do it out of spite. I’m willing to – ugh. Fuck. _Change_. Or be better, or whatever it is.”  
  
Jonah doesn’t speak. He stands up, pacing the room, hands in his pockets. Dan watches him wearily, and then opens his mouth again. “Fuck. Don’t make me say it.”  
  
“Say it?” Jonah cocks a brow. “You mean –”  
  
“Oh, my God, fuck off,” Dan groans. “You know how I feel.”  
  
And then Jonah’s laughing, maybe despite himself, maybe at the ludicrousness of the whole situation. “Yeah,” he manages to say in between laughs. “Shit. I do.”  
  
And then Dan’s laughing with him. And it’s the stupidest thing in the world. And it feels okay.

 

* * *

  
  
**X.**  
  
Six weeks after Representative Dan Egan (D-NY) is sworn in, he quietly takes Jonah to a jewelry store and buys him a much nicer ring than the one he’s been wearing for the past two years. Because honestly, that old one made his own taste look like shit. He buys himself a matching ring, almost as an afterthought, and is shocked by how good it looks on his finger. He looks himself over in the mirror: distinguished in his best suit, greying slightly at the temples and a heavy gold ring on his left hand. He thinks they might as well do the whole thing properly now.

He and Jonah have a brief, avoidant conversation about the inevitability of the situation before going to the courthouse to make it legal, dragging Amy along as their witness; she wears a dark blue dress and a supremely smug expression throughout the entire ceremony and peaces out afterward with an ironic “Now that the institution of marriage is officially fucked, I’ll see you two on Monday.”

The words “I love you” are spoken out loud exactly once.

They go out to dinner afterward and Dan distracts himself with a rant about how they’re still five votes down on Lyman’s gun control bill that he’s trying hard to grow support for. Jonah orders pasta, Dan has the salmon and wild rice, they split a bottle of good red wine and eavesdrop on the tables across the room, filling in the inaudible parts of their conversation with whispered, sardonic speculation. They go home and have another drink, get into an argument about the finer points of parking adjacent to the RHOB, and have rough, athletic sex, Dan feeling perhaps more possessive than ever. He sucks bruising kisses into the pale, flushed skin along Jonah's neck and collarbones, marking his husband up good and hard, _claiming_ him, and if he shows up to work on Monday with a couple visible hickeys or a scratch of his own, who cares, everyone will know he's a married man by then - and _fuck_ , that's so hot. That might be the most appealing part of marriage, Dan thinks, everyone knowing exactly who he's sleeping with, what they do to each other, their implicit approval through the social contract. Fuck. He's kicking himself for being so resistant to this for so long.

It’s not until they’re lying next to each other some time after the fact, C-SPAN on mute as Jonah sips another glass of wine, that Dan starts to second-guess the events of the day. He's wondering whether they should have waited, not been so spontaneous, planned a big summer wedding and sold the photos to Details or maybe just People - and their families will be upset, having not been invited; Dave wanted to be his best man, although Dan preferred having Amy there in his place anyway -

Jonah sets down his wine glass, throws an arm around him and whispers pseudo-seductively in his ear, “So, I guess we’re technically newlyweds now…”

“Ugh,” Dan mutters. The low bedroom light glints off the ring. He can’t stop looking at it, now that it actually means something. “If you start calling me ‘sweetie’, I’m going to end up on some Investigation Discovery special about murder-husbands or whatever that shit is.”  
  
“Don’t worry,” says Jonah. “I’d Gone Girl myself first.”  
  
“You _wish_ you could get away with Gone Girling yourself,” Dan shakes his head. “I will shred and eat the goddamn Bill of Rights if you ever manage to fake so much as a realistic-sounding phone call to get out of a meeting.”  
  
Jonah smirks. “I’m a better liar than you think.”  
  
“Yeah, well. We’ll fucking see about that.”


End file.
